Introduction
George Orwell's 1984 is primarily about the life of Winston Smith, who is a low-ranking member of The Party and is under constant frustration since the ruler is extremely controlling. There is no Constitution or laws in Oceania, but there are law enforcers and multiple posters that warn people that they are being watched and are under constant observation. Oceania and Eurasia have always been conflicting, but the latter is then pronounced as a loyal ally. The society depicted in the book is portrayed as that which is socially controlled through surveillance and disinformation, and it resonates with the current governments.
Orwell's goal in the book 1984 is to depict how some societies use totalitarianism and surveillance as a significant method of disciplining their citizens. The primary purpose of Big Brother's technique in the book was to closely monitor all members of society by investigating their behaviors and thoughts so that the government can control them (Orwell 3). Big Brother is a fictional character in the book and is the leader of Oceania, a dictatorial state where the government has total power over its subjects. In that society, every person is under constant watch by devices by technological devices such as cameras, microphones, and televisions (Orwell 13). Oceania is under constant surveillance to minimize the chances of secret conspiracies by the state. All the middle-class citizens have telescreens in their homes, but the lower-class are not monitored since they are considered unimportant to the Party (Orwell 13). The surveillance of citizens in the book 1984 is a depiction of totalitarianism, which poses a significant danger to society. Thus, the government, as depicted by George Orwell, deprived people of their rights, thoughts, and freedoms, and there was the risk of having a rebellious society due to such laws. When Orwell was writing the book, he had observed such dictatorial developments in Spain and Russia where civil liberties were destroyed and economic strength reduced.
Just like Big Brother and his controlling mode of governance, some societies today are also under constant surveillance by their governments for various reasons. Thus, the surveillance society, as depicted in the book 1984, resonates with the current culture whereby there is a continuous recording, storage, and the assessment of individual's data as they go about their lives. For example, China is one of the countries with the most surveillance, and citizens' lives, thoughts, and behaviors are monitored using video cameras (Glynn 38). The United States and Germany are also leading as the countries with the highest number of video cameras to monitor their citizens (Young 93). As of 2019, it was estimated that there were over 200 million monitoring devices in China, and the number is four times those in the United States, and it is estimated that the number will rise to 626 million by the end of 2020 (Glynn 40). The mass surveillance in China emerged in 1949 after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, and the strategy's objective was to control the citizens to strengthen Mao's power in the newly founded government. Such extreme surveillance measures in China and other countries results in a dictatorial form of leadership where the government has total control over its subjects.
Conclusion
In summary, the surveillance society depicted in the book 1984 by George Orwell resonates with the current culture in various ways. In the book, Big Brother closely monitored all members of society by investigating their behaviors and thoughts by using telescreen, thus leading to dictatorship. In the current society, some countries like China, Germany, and the United States have resulted in the use of surveillance to monitor and control their people by observing their behaviors and thoughts and thus infringing their rights.
