Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

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I'm personally favoring things going more like a slow-motion version of C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength (the interesting half of which is what Orwell kinda ripped off writing 1984 - it's sort of a spiritual prequel).

To wit: launching a grand patriotic endeavor with much fanfare and overwhelming public support (exploiting a sense of national unity and purpose fostered by the recent war), having that endeavor set up a secret parallel justice system answerable to nobody, indefinite detentions...

oh, and the ensuing clashes between the wronged and the merely indifferent... the lowly everyday employees in the terrible scheme for world domination who wish they could get out of it, or do something about it, but fear for their lives and their futures...

(Postscript. Then there's a bunch of Christian allegory tacked on inelegantly, which, as Orwell pointed out, undermines the dystopian horror - c.f. http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ )

The reason That Hideous Strength is a better blueprint for what's happening than Brave New World or 1984 is that its focus is on the intersection of communication, government and human behavior, rather than on a dystopian future enabled by new technology. Instead of trying to paint a picture of the future it deftly holds a mirror up in front of us, one that reflects just as well in any era.

Another virtue of That Hideous Strength is that Lewis is good at blurring the lines between "good guys" and "bad guys". Instead of Thought Police, he shows Mark Studdock and Feverstone doing evil things out of ordinary motives that we all share.

To continue your metaphor, when it holds up a mirror, we can all see our own faces.

It makes us consider how little it might take to turn us into collaborators in such a future. That might be a useful thought for tech companies right now.

Orwell owes more to James Burnham's non-fiction book The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World. Orwell's pamphlet-within-a-book in 1984 "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" is more or less a condensed version of Burnham's thesis. Orwell even reviewed Burnham's book when it came out: http://www.george-orwell.org/James_Burnham_and_the_Manageria...

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