2020 Wasn’t 1984, But It Came Really Close.
How close we came to living in George Orwell’s dystopia
This year was bad. In fact, it was worse than bad — it was terrible. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down countries around the world, hundreds of thousands of people died, and I watched the finale of Game of Thrones alone — in the dark.
But amidst all the bad news, there is something to be thankful for. Though I spent two-thirds of the year staring at a smartphone, it didn’t stare back. Though I talked a lot with friends and family, no one else knows what we talked about. Though I used the Internet 47% more than usual, you don’t know what I was doing. Privacy and free speech survived — the year wasn’t 1984.
But it could have been.
Smartphones, AKA Telescreens
As I said, I was glued to my smartphone throughout the pandemic. Mostly, I was watching vampire TV shows and GOT. But other times, I was doing important stuff, like reading my email, writing my college application and Tweeting. Sometime between then and now, I realized that my smartphone knows more about me than my own sister. It’s scary.
George Orwell was no scientist, but he wrote about the smartphone long before IBM invented it (What?! Big Blue invented the smartphone?). Only he…
