Big Brother in the 21st Century

In 2010, while attending Santa Monica College, I was assigned a paper to write based on an article written by Nicholas Carr titled Is Google Making Us Stupid, published in The Atlantic. 

The objective of the paper was to get us to think critically about technology and how it’s influencing our brains. 

 I took the stand that although there may be some negative effects of the internet, the copious amount of information at our fingertips can only enhance our ability to learn and retain information. I believed that the internet would help our species evolve intellectually. 

Ten years later, I am beginning to think I may have been wrong.

1984

George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel tells the tale of a society where no one has any freedom or hope. A civilization where the government controls every aspect of a person’s life. Hidden cameras are everywhere and you never know who may be a spy for the “Thought Police”—a true totalitarian nightmare where any expression of feelings or emotion could get you arrested. 

This is a world where phrases like “freedom is slavery,”  “double talk,” “unperson” and “war is peace” are ingrained in a person’s psyche—a police state where you are always being watched and the threat of being snatched from your home in the middle of the night is a reality everyone lives with.

In this dank existence, books are burned, language is abolished and any form of free speech is brutally oppressed. To control every facet of daily life is not enough for big brother, but the party's primary need is to reprogram the way you process thoughts so that you become brainwashed. When big brother tells you 2 + 2 = 5, you obediently agree. Big brother has authoritative centralized state control. For a government to fully repress its citizens in this way, it exploits two key aspects of human survival:

Conformity and Collectivism 

The doctrine of Collectivism is one in which the goals of a certain collective, such as a state, nation, or society, are given precedence over the goals of individuals. During the 20th century, governments accomplished this communal compliance through intimidation and force. Orwell witnessed the rise of autocratic governments and the inevitable emergence of despots throughout Europe.  

Orwell was born in 1903. He was a young boy during the first World War. He lived through the cruelty of the Great Depression that followed. The economic hardships that many European counties faced fostered in an era of dictators such as Benito Mussolini in Italy, Adolf Hitler in Germany, and General Francisco Franco in Spain. The entire landscape of Europe was transforming and Orwell didn’t like what he was seeing. 

Orwell had nothing but pure, unadulterated disdain for fascism. His conviction was so strong that he fought in the Spanish Civil War where he was injured by shrapnel that struck him in the neck.  

Orwell saw these governments strip away the essences of an individual’s persona, leaving them as a fragile eggshell of their former selves. A republic of fear is created within the population. People either obey or they are sent away to be re-educated. It is estimated that Soviet  Communist leader Joseph Stalin murdered between 20 to 25 million people by sending them to the gulags to be worked to death. He became so homicidal that he killed members of his own family. 

Orwell’s concern was that these collective societies that were emerging in the first half of the 20th century were all becoming authoritarian. His goal when it came to writing was to create social change. Orwell wrote 1984 as a dire warning as to how easy it can be for people in power to manipulate the masses. But Orwell also believed that the loss of freedom and the conception of big brother didn’t lie in collectivism alone. 

Google is Watching You

Toward the end of Orwell's life, he saw the acute development of technology as a potential threat to civil liberties. 

Most of us are aware that everything you search for on Google is stored and saved. That data is used to create a profile on you so that retailers and marketers know how to target you when it comes to advertising. The question becomes what else is our private information being used for? Many have speculated that large tech companies are spying on Americans. Who hasn’t noticed having a conversation with a friend about purchasing a certain item then suddenly you see an advertisement for that product in your Facebook feed.

It’s an unsettling feeling that tech companies know so much about the intimate details of your life. Think about some of the things you search for on the internet. Some people confide in Google more than they do their spouses. Some use the internet to explore their sexuality. People are relying more and more on technology to do everything for them. Leaning on technology so much could be decreasing the amount of brainpower we use, making us cognitively flabby.

I am old enough to remember what it was like before cell phones. I didn't have anyone's number stored in my phone. I had all my friends and family phone numbers memorized in my head. In the past, if you wanted to know something about a subject, you had to read a book.  With information being so accessible, I am curious if our growing dependence on technology is weakening the neural structure in our brains, reducing our ability to think critically about issues that affect all of us. And that is what people in power want—an intellectually lazy society who is so caught up in their virtual realities that they willingly ignore what the power-elite are doing behind the curtain. 

Everyone has been to a public place like a restaurant and seen a table full of people who are all staring at their phones. No one is engaged with anyone else, no one is making eye contact or sharing conversation. They are more concerned with documenting their meal with photos and how they will look on Instagram. This is one of the fears Orwell had when it came to technology—that we would be so consumed with the mental stimulation of technological advances that we would lose sight of what matters.

Our insatiable craving for consumerism and our desire for instant gratification could be conditioning us to become a society of sheep. Disengaged and blind from the decisions that profoundly impact us.  

Ignorance is Strength

The German poet Goethe once wrote that “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” I do not know empirically if the internet is making us stupid. Studies I have researched on the topic have mixed results. What I do believe is that technology is intellectually castrating our society. 

We are not paying attention to what the power-elite are doing in the shadows. They say that democracy dies in darkness, but this is happening right under our eyes. We are so absorbed by social media and our Instagram status that we are ignoring indiscriminate abuses of power. We are being fed lies and accepting that this is somehow normal. 

We know that 140,000 of our fellow neighbors and family members have died of COVID-19. When the President of the United States goes on television and says that his administration’s response to the pandemic is a “huge success,” it’s double talk. When the President claims his actions have saved millions of lives, it’s simply not true. When he tells the American people that we are winning the war against the virus—really? I am curious that if this virus touched someone close to the President's heart if he would still feel the same sense of grandiose accomplishment.   

If we do not get our heads out of our so-called “smart-phones” and wake up to what is happening in this country, we could be heading toward a path of idiocracy. Orwell’s dystopian fears for Western Capitalistic societies may not have come true, but our addiction to technology could be having adverse effects on our ability to think critically.  

This was one of Orwell’s reservations about technology—that it would produce a society of mindless zombies who are disengaged politically, as well as disconnected from each other. By encouraging a nation to become intellectually feeble, it gives the people in power a better opportunity to divide and conquer the masses.  

When big brother asks you what 2 + 2 is, take a moment to think about what your answer will be.