The Huxley and Orwell information nightmare we don’t live in
Humans like to make sense of their world in stories. Not only do they like it but they are programmed for it. This is one of the reasons why we enjoy projecting and finding similarities between the stories we know and the lives we are living.
As someone that has a communications background and an interest in sociology and human behaviour, I am fascinated by books such as 1984, Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World, and the societies they depict.
We are still far away from becoming any of those dystopian societies and we aren’t necessarily moving towards any one of them in particular. However, my guess is that I am not the only one who gets shivers down my spine when seeing how similar some of the ideas portrayed in these books are with the society we live in.
It is often said that knowledge is power, and the aforementioned novels are a clear manifestation of this. They all have something in common: a powerful central organism that seizes and manipulates information to retain control and dominance.
Distant as we may be from these fictional worlds, if we allow our society to get closer to any one of them, it is mostly ourselves we should blame.
The chain of information seems to be disrupted and internet and social media are often pointed out as the causes. The reasons for this include the growth of “Fake News”, the crisis of mainstream media, and the commoditisation of news. These are all information distorting elements that impact our society.
Technologies are not inherently good or bad. They cannot be blamed as they are only what we want and allow them to be. The same tools that are blamed for the current demise could be used to immensely enrich us.
However, this is not an easy thing to do. When every platform on the internet seems to appeal to our most basic instincts for their economic benefit and when every click-baity title is crafted to make us click subconsciously, it would seem we don’t stand a chance.
Still, we need to do our part to be in control. Because if we yield the power to control the information we consume and the decisions we make, we allow our rational and critical thinking to slowly die. And in the end, it will be because we decided we were more comfortable doing so.
We’ll admit we were better off consuming watery, distorted or even fake information, than doing the little bit that was necessary to withhold power. We didn’t even have to stand up from our swivel chairs.
When looking at the current state of the media, I feel both angered at how we have left things drift off and let ourselves be confused and manipulated. But I also understand why we let it happen, after all we are facing powerful interests.
Powerful interests driven by foul purposes or simply for dishonest profit. Never by the duty and purpose of the media to serve the public.
But there are better ways to take a stand, and we don’t have to do it alone. We can work together, as a society, as a community, to build on each others’ knowledge and create tools to make it better and easier to avoid defaulting to idleness and comfort. To stop expecting to be spoon-fed and to start feeding ourselves.
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