Orwell v. Huxley: Battle of the Forecasters

So who got it right? Or at least, who got it most right?

Boiled down to its essence, Orwell’s vision of the future was one in which the government tightly controlled the flow of information, enabling it to control the thoughts of its population. Huxley’s future was one in which there was arguably too much information – most of it inane – thereby distracting the population from what was really going on.

I think few would argue that Orwell was a more influential writer than Huxley – we use phrases like thoughtcrime, Big Brother and memory hole often. “Brave New World” isn’t even a Huxleyism – Shakespeare coined the phrase. But it is rather ironic that the Huxleyite reality show Big Brother is inspired by Orwell’s 1984.

The problem in most of the world (though clearly a country like North Korea is exceptional) is not that the government controls what is said, but that there is no filter, and that real news is washed away in a tide of celebrity dancing contests, cooking programmes and chat shows.

On the list of the world’s busiest websites, the highest ranked websites are primarily search engines with a smattering of ad companies (from pop up ad traffic, presumably). Netflix, the movie streaming site, was 41st as of December 2016. Pornhub and xHamster, two pornographic websites, 51st and 80th respectively. The first dedicated news site was the New York Times at 111th.

So what’s the problem? Haven’t people always wanted to be entertained? Sure. But now we live in an age of universal suffrage, characterised by the democratisation of, well, everything. In modern democracies many people have power over things they have little knowledge or understanding of. Given this awesome power collectively wielded, voters must fulfil their civic duties with great care.

So Orwell got it wrong on most scores, except in North Korea and maybe Turkmenistan. Everywhere else it is Huxley’s white noise that proliferates.