1984

June 8th, 1949. A book called 1984, written by English novelist George Orwell, is published. This book reached number 6 on the modern library's hundred best novels, and has received much acclaim. If you haven't read it I highly recommend it. If you plan to read it don't read this article.

1984 is a book in which Winston Smith, the protagonist, lives in a world run by the Ingsoc (English Socialism) political party. The totalitarian government ensure that the middle class are spied upon by telescreens. Every movement they make is being watched and recorded. Not only are their actions heavily spied upon at work, but at home too. There is no relaxing, the party knows where you are at all times. And what you think. Big brother, the party leader, has made individualism a "thoughtcrime".

Winston ends up having the individual thoughts he possesses tortured out of him. What is striking about this part of the book is not that he is made to simply agree that two plus two is five, but that there can be absolutely no doubt. The Government controls thoughts to the extent that you actually want to believe what they want you to believe. That is, ultimately, a form of control greater than any religion or dictatorship has ever managed.

George Orwell was perhaps 30 years off with his prediction, but today we live in a society with a different form of control, perhaps one even more terrifying than even Orwell could have predicted - Facebook.

What on earth do I mean? What is this click baiting drivel that you are reading?

In 1984, people were always watched by telescreens. The threat of always being watched, even if nobody was actually on the other side was enough to make people conform. But today, we have the "check in" function on Facebook - a way of registering where you are and when. With Facebook, it has become desirable to report where you are, what you look like, what you are doing, and even what you are eating on the most mundane profiles. That, readers is the scariest thing - even if big brother wasn't watching, social convention has now made it popular to keep a nice neat log for them, so that they have history on each of us.

If you were to go back to the 1940s, and introduce a small pocket size device which enabled you to report where you were and show pictures of what you were doing, with no ability of knowing who had access to this information, it would absolutely terrify people. It would simply not catch on at all. The lack of privacy in modern society is one of the greatest shifts social convention has undergone in the last 50 years. It is already well known that Government Intelligence use Facebook for potential terror suspects and to build a profile on people - employers use it to evaluate future candidates etc.

So the question is why? Why would anyone want to do this? I, personally, don't. But I suspect the answer may be because everyone else is doing it - Facebook is the new black.