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Common Threads in George Orwell's 1984 and Today's Society Essay

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Common Threads in George Orwell's 1984 and Today's Society "Big Brother is Watching You"(Orwell 5). This simple phrase has become the cornerstone of the conspiracy theorists dialog. George Orwell may have writing a cautionary novel with 1984, but there is little possibility that he could have foreseen how close to reality his novel would truly become. In the past 50 years, the world has become a much more dangerous place. Along with this danger has come a call for governments to do more to protect their citizens. This Protection has changed over the years, but it has become more and more invasive in order to "protect" the populations from various "threats". Orwell introduces the reader to a future where the government monitors …show more content…

There is no explicit protection of what we do on the Internet or any data or information we view, share, or use. Of course, the FBI, CIA, NSA and HSA are not continually monitoring every citizen, but in Orwell's 1984, the Thought Police were not always watching their Telescreens either. Orwell's eerie foresight only continues when Winston notices a Police Patrol helicopter darting from window to window, looking into people's windows. This type of surveillance in clearly illegal today, and would be noticed immediately, but in the last 50 years, satellites and unmanned drone aircraft have taken over the fictional role of the Police Patrols. Public satellites that are 10 to 15 years old currently can produce digital images with 1-meter resolution. Military satellites can supposedly produce images with 10-centimeter resolution, meaning that `Big Brother' could theoretically follow you from your house to your work to a restaurant and home again without you even knowing you were being watched. This type of surveillance is most likely being used mostly overseas, and not on Americans, but its mere existence should be a clear signal to us that our age has not avoided the surveillance pitfalls of 1984. One very disturbing aspect of 1984 is the Spies. This is

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