The Guardian marks the occasion with this post from Henry Porter who looks at the government’s (in this case the British government) desire for public surveillance through the lens of 1984, he draws some interesting parallels between ‘Oceania’, the nation making war against Big Brother’s homeland Ingsoc, and the threat of global terrorism today, arguing that like Oceania, global terrorism is an equally poorly-defined threat that is used to justify government intrusion into individual liberties under the banner of ‘security’.
It’s interesting to speculate what Orwell would think of the security cameras that stare at us from every grocery store, ATM and, increasingly, street corner, and what he would think of our placid acceptance of these devices in our lives (not to mention how his ultimate symbol of government impression – Big Brother himself – has been used as the conceit for a cheesy reality show).
But the article made me think of something else entirely – Twitter, the latest Internet craze, the site that allows you to tell the world about your life, in 140-character bursts. It reminds me of another concept from Orwell’s 1984 – Newspeak.
Newspeak was the Ingsoc government’s attempt to simplify language – rather than have a collection of words to describe a concept like “bad”: poor, unpleasant, dire, deficient (and about four dozen other synonyms), it was replaced by one word: “ungood”. Something very bad was “plus ungood” or “double plus ungood” if it was absolutely awful. The stated reason for Newspeak was efficiency, the real goal though was the further control of society – to so limit human ability to communicate beyond the simplest constructions, so that fomenting a rebellion against Big Brother would be impossible - people simply would not be able to express the deep concepts and emotions that motivate individuals to oppose tyranny.
And that brings me back to Twitter. Am I saying it is some sort of nefarious government mind-control plot? Of course not. But I do have to wonder if it could not have a similar effect, by limiting expression to 140 character bursts, do we run the risk of losing our ability to clearly express complex ideas? (Let’s not forget text messaging, or TXT MSGNG, which also stresses a similar economy of characters) Just last week, Senator Charles Grassley decided to use Twitter to attack the Obama Administration’s health care proposals. Unfortunately for Grassley, the truncated Twitter-speak made him sound like an idiot – few Tweets or Texts read like fine literature.
But is Twitter the right place for public discourse on a complex issue like national health care in the first place? My answer is no, yet pressure to use the new technology is driving the debate there, and forcing it to conform to the rigid standards of the new media. It makes you wonder though, if we allow the media to dictate the message, will we lose the ability to make complex arguments all together?
It’s certainly a question Orwell would have pondered.
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