A friend and I were discussing the Brave New World and 1984 once. We took it for granted that our world resembles one of these dystopias, if not both. She summarized there difference in terms of access: Orwell's universe depended on a restriction of information to keep its citizens ignorant of the very concept of justice; Huxley's world was flooded with information (but only just enough) and so people couldn't sort the important from the pleasurable.

It seemed like our world was looking more like Huxley's. There is so much crap in cyberspace that justice is hidden from view (but its out there...).

But the what-seems-like-de-facto centralization of mainstream internet makes Orwell's fantasy seem all too real. That China uses "strategic, timely" censorship is only one side of the coin. Surveillance too, whether from browser cookies or 'telescreens,' is driving us towards an even deeper conflation of these two nightmares.