Reading 1984 in the age of surveillance

There’s an old story about a PhD student who’s talking to a lecturer. The lecturer asks the student what she’s studying, and she explains, “I’m looking at the influence of Dickens on Shakespeare.”

The lecturer nods, and then pauses, “You mean the influence of William Shakespeare on Charles Dickens.” The student replies, “No,” and goes on to argue that since we’re so familiar with Dickens’ work, through print, film and TV we cannot help but, in some way, view earlier work like Shakespeare’s through modern media lenses.

I say this because last month I finished reading 1984 — I know, I know, I should have read it by now. But, if I’m honest, it was one of those intimidating novels that I always felt was beyond me, like War and Peace or Ulysses.

I came to 1984 knowing about Newspeak, Doublethink, Big Brother, Room 101. I came to 1984 knowing about the context in which it was written. I came to 1984 with that Apple ad repeating in my head.

But, I mostly came to 1984 knowing about Snowden, data privacy, and targeted ads, geo-tracking, and metadata. I read the novel through the lens of the modern data privacy debate; and not, as was intended the lens of the Second World War and Cold War.

So, I’m going to review it as such; through a modern lens.

Orwell’s predicted future gets the main points right, but he fluffs it on the details. Specifically, he doesn’t go far enough in his description of the depth of data-capture, the agents of surveillance, and the visibility of those agents.

With that said, and most crucially, he gets the social acceptance of surveillance right.

Depth

Through that modern lens 1984 is often surprisingly familiar, but also somewhat naive. If Orwell was tapping away at this keyboard today he would find that large passages would not require any changes.

Yet others — specifically where he describes Winston and Julia’s trysts to their off-grid flat — near impossible to write. In the novel Julia devises elaborate ways for her and Winston to escape the city (or, more accurately, the party) and spend long hours in the country or their abandoned flat. Writing today, Orwell would find it more difficult to remove his characters from Big Brother’s eyes.

Agents

As Orwell describes intrusive government spying his prediction misses the mark. In 2016 it’s private corporations who collect and process our personal information — which governments then attempt to access.

In the book Winston describes the telescreens, which both broadcast party propaganda, and monitor their users. Again, Orwell wasn’t a million miles away from the truth.

“Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set” — BBC News, 2015

Social Acceptance

If we agree that Orwell predicted modern surveillance culture (and we’re basically arguing over the nitty gritty), we would have to also agree that he correctly predicted how the public accepts — both willingly and tacitly — constant surveillance.

Albeit for very different reasons 1984’s surveillance and 2016’s surveillance encounter little resistance in the general public. With Big Brother, surveillance culture develops through a program of hypocognition and intimidation, while modern surveillance gains much of its social acceptance because it is largely unseen, or not understood.

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past”

In Orwell’s world the aim of surveillance is to change people’s behaviour (think Junior Spies); but in Snowdenian surveillance the aim is not to change behaviour, but to record it.

Visibility

And there’s an important distinction here. Observation leads to normalisation — when people are aware that they are being watched, or when they think they are being watched, they alter their behaviour and self-police. 1984 is a constant panopticon, where Smith is conscious that at all times someone may or may not be watching him.

“Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected”

In 2016 we’re largely aware, and even expect, that our data is being recorded but we’re willing to trade our privacy, and perhaps more than we realise, for the benefits of being connected.

1984/2016

In reading 1984 with modern eyes I was unprepared for the last third of the novel. It’s not a novel about technology, or a novel about surveillance — it’s a novel about what people are willing to do serve their own politics.

And if anything reminds you that the book was a political novel, it’s the description of Winston’s imprisonment, torture, and ‘rehabilitation’.

“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.”

P.S. There’s something wonderfully circular about reading an ebook of 1984 on Google Play, knowing that Google could monitor by progress, view my highlights, and read my notes.