We talked about how technology has brought our society closer and closer to the world portrayed in Nineteen Eighty-four. Here are a few examples we came up with; you may be able to think of more.
Language was being condensed to a few words in Nineteen Eighty-four. The New Speak dictionary was being revised constantly. Today language has been condensed to a few letters in text messages. Written language has devolved into pictogram. Open a word document and you'll see what I mean. Icons for save, open, new, print, etc. Space saving you may say, well a bathroom door has all kinds of space. Many public restrooms simply display a plaque with an drawing of a man or woman.
The poor man in Nineteen Eighty-four mentioned eating dry bread and drinking foul beer. His food was rationed by the government. Thank goodness we can buy and choose our food but that food is getting worse. On December 29th of last year I bought my daughter a birthday cake. Her birthday is on the 30th. I wanted the cake to be fresh; I could have picked up her cake almost anytime. The cake had an expiration date of some day in March. Have you noticed some stores put their name brand cheese and orange juice substitute in the refrigerated section while others pile it up in the isle? Have you checked the expiration date on this so called cheese or orange juice? It lasts half of forever. Am I the only one who noticed how chicken breasts are pumped full of hormones? They've got to be twice the size they were a few years ago. Hormone pumped chicken breasts is a double edged sword. Prices for boneless, skinless chicken breasts have been the same for the last twenty-five plus years. Only difference, back then the chicken came frozen in five pound hunks and now it's sold fresh. If I ever do a Hall Of Shame post I'll talk about how several restaurants have lowered the quality of their food. Cooking from scratch has morphed into take a convenience food and add to it. Call me behind the times but I don't trust a machine to mix, knead, and bake my bread all by itself. I'm not a foodie. I'm not a health food junkie. Okay, those who know me get off the floor and stop laughing. I can discern the quality of the food I eat and it has gone down. Here I'm comparing conditions in Nineteen Eighty-four with today.
You've heard the phrase, "Lies, damn lies, and statistics". The example that stuck with me in the book was the government cut the chocolate ration by twenty percent. A very short time later the government announced good news; the chocolate ration will be raised twenty percent. A ploy to make the government look good and the people feel good. If you don't think about it you'll say, the people are back to the original amount of chocolate. Actually they still have less. Twenty percent of one hundred is eighty, and twenty percent added to eighty is ninety-six. Recently a Congresswoman got her numbers out of whack when talking about budget cuts.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) had a dire prediction for America about sequestration, claiming that 170 million jobs would be lost as a result of the across-the-board cuts. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are only about 140 million jobs in the whole country.http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/28/Rep-Maxine-Waters-Inflates-Sequester-to-170-Million-Jobs-LostIn Nineteen Eighty-four all information came from the government. Decenters were ridiculed or imprisoned. Periodic and frequent "Hates" were compulsorily held. Today we still have media with one or the other leaning. We can choose liberal or conservative but there is little to no balanced reporting. Put a liberal on a conservative program and the host will make that liberal sound ridiculous. Put a conservative on a liberal program and you get the same result, this time the conservative will look like an idiot. It's all about ratings. Conservatives have talk radio sewed up while liberals have television.
The telescreen in Nineteen Eighty-four is still with us. Like then, we are being watched everywhere we go. Our governments haven't installed surveillance cameras and listening devices in each and every house but we are watched when we go out. Not only do banks and stores have cameras but so do every Tom, Dick, and Harry. A YouTube video of an argument and fight on a bus comes to mind. If you're around people there's a chance your picture may end up on the Internet. People post anything and everything to Facebook and YouTube. The government may or may not be watching you but billions have the ability to watch if they are so inclined. Think you can speed when no police are in sight, remember photo-cop? Swat you misbehaving brat on the butt in public and some do-gooder is liable to track you down and report you to Child Protective Services. Last year there was lots of talk about government listening in on suspected terrorists' phone conversations. Now tell me again how these people got to be suspected in the first place. I remember a radio broadcast taking about this. The guest was explaining how they listen for certain words. If they hear these words they continue to listen. If they don't hear these words, they stop listening. So how long and to whom do they listen?
You can run but it better be for exercise. You will find it hard scrabble to run and hide these days. First, you will need an unlimited supply of cold hard cash. Nothing electronic and I mean nothing. On top of that you'd better be careful with the amounts of cash you spend and the places you spend it. Say you've gotta get out of Dodge. Tell no one, if you can't keep it secret why should anybody else. Don't go any place you've talked about or searched your computer about. You can't hop a plane because the cameras at the airport will see you. Plus, you can't buy your ticket with cash because that is how terrorists bought their tickets. So you disguise yourself and take a bus. You get to the back of beyond, where will you live? Hot bed and flea bag motels take cash, no questions asked. You'll leave a paper trail at a rental agency or with a landlord. You can't buy a house because the IRS will eventually want to know where all that money to purchase that house came from. You can buy another cell phone but who are you going to call? You left your old cell phone in Dodge because of the GPS. All your numbers were stored in that phone and you can't remember anything except the area code. You need to stay inside as much as possible so you don't end up on Facebook. Now Facebook has the technology to know who you are because people insist on posting and tagging every picture they take. The days of changing your name and moving out west are over.
I am going somewhere with the above paragraph. We all know we can be tracked with the GPS in our cell phones. We know our credit card use can be tracked as well. I learned that our Breeze Card activity is also recorded. FYI, a Breeze Card is basically a stored value card used on the Atlanta public transportation system, MARTA. My youngest daughter lost her Breeze card on the train. We immediately went to one of MARTA's ride stores and explained what happened. Because I had registered our cards we are entitled to fare replacements if the card is lost. The agent said she could see where and when my daughter's card was used. The agent was able to quickly transfer my daughters fares to another card and deactivate the lost one. We're talking about less than an hour from when my daughter used the card and the agent seeing when and where it was used. I don't think MARTA gave this perk to register our Breeze cards so they can track our movements; but the capability is out there. If they need it, they've got it. I thought the agent would say something like you had so much value on the lost card so I'll replace it with an equal amount. It was naive of me not to make the leap, if she can tell how much value the old card has she can also know where it's been.
Remember, Big Brother is Watching.
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