In Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell creates a futuristic, dystopian society. Orwell alerts his readers that in our future our world will be as corrupt as he creates in the novel, through constant and surveillance by the party, the ruling force of the nation. The party brainwashes its citizens. The state inflicted fear upon its members through close surveillance and the threat of being vaporised. Through the eyes of the novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, the reader is presented with what totalitarian society based on what constant surveillance can look like and how government structure keeps its citizens obedient.

In the novel, privacy or individuality is not present in Oceania. Winston deeply values private space and personal opinions in spite of the danger he subjects himself to by having either of those things. Hs values become quite obvious to the reader when he walks down a “slummy quarter of the town” and purchases a notebook. In doing this Winston planned to use it as a diary, which is strictly forbidden, he was challenging the party. Orwell has presented his dystopian society through imagery with the use of the word ‘slummy’. The reader instantly has an idea of the world the people of Oceania lived in and the world the state had created. Life in Oceania has not disappeared and neither has its citizens, not only are the actions of the citizens judged, but their emotions as well are dangerous and become a threat to themselves if noticed by the telescreens. “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when in the range of a telescreen, the smallest thing could give you away”. The Party deems facial expressions reason enough to punish citizens if they show any sign of nervousness or emotion. Therby, the private space of an individual is heavliy invaded upon, not only is it done physically in terms of surveillence cameras and simialr objects of control, but also emotionally.

In addition to this, the government also monitors its citizens at public events such as the Two Minutes Hate. If one does not attend such gatherings or show enough enthusiasm the government become suspicious as it is an act of thought crime. “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death”. Yet as Winston was at the end of the novel, a prisoner, the government chose not to vaporise him. They chose to trap him and make him susceptible to Big Brother. While Winston spends weeks in prison Orwell comes back to the warning he had been presenting throughout the novel. The prisoners are isolated by walls, but guards can observe them at any time ad thereby revoke the prisoners privacy. Orwell creates a structured pbedience amoong the inmates while enforcing minimun ohysical control.

Private space in the sense of being free form observation had successfully been terminated by the aid of two-way telescreens, hidden microphones installed on every corner and every home; a direct effect of these methods of control is an extreme dismantling of privacy. Furthermore, the party also keep their citizens in control with the help of a set of ministries that serve different purposes. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth, their main purpose was to spread propaganda and change what has already been published through newspapers. In spite of his occupation, Winston reads a book by an author named Emmanuel Goldstein. Goldstein was, according to the Party, a man who heavily betrayed the regime and was sentenced to death yet somehow managed to escape and vanish. In the book, he says “the aim of the Party was merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control”. The passage later revealed how afraid the Party is of its citizens forming groups and connecting with each other as they can share individual thoughts. The aim of eliminating forbidden social interaction presents itself in the many kinds of surveillance mechanisms that the Party enforce in order to have a full view of its citizens in order to detect forbidden behavior.

No one could have predicted the world we currently live in, and yet Orwell came very close. His writting was almost so accurate that today, when the book is read, the events that occur and the rules that are made almost sound familiar. Orwell succeded in one of the warnings he was trying to present. Today, control through social media, media and web searching are huge issues when it comes to perosnal privacy. Google, one of the biggest companies in the world, a company people trust is keeping our information which is beyond what anyone could have imagined. Google is something people depend on, its a tool of research that is incorporated into daily lives, it poses to be a reliable safe source, however, Google knows where someone is or has been, it has a record of everything that has been searched and deleted and has data on any indvidual that can fill millions of documents.

Dyland Curran from The Guardian said “Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big”. By having the option of downloading your information shows that it is stored without one knowing anyway, so offering the option of gaining access to your information seems to be a pointless system in terms of personal privacy. The documents include bookmarks, contacts, the photos taken on a phone, the business they bought from and the products they bought through google. Facebook a social media platform also has large amounts of your data too, “Facebook gave me the option of downloading my information as well. Mine was roughly 400,000-word documents.”

In parallel to this, Orwell’s protagonist, Winston worked in the Records Department in the Ministry Of Truth. His job was to rewrite documents so that they constantly match the changing party news. This connects to one of Googles most popular websites, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is known to be one of the only websites where people can change and manipulate their information. It can be done by everyone on the internet and it is not recommended as a reliable source, “Wikipedia should not be anyone final stop when it comes to seeking knowledge” says David Barnett, The Independent. Another incident of fake news is the U.S. president Donald Trump on the topic of global warming. “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive”. The president is feeding lies to the public and tries to manipulate people out of the facts so that the American Government doesn’t lose money out of their manufacturing. This connects with Orwell’s Party as they use fake news as a mechanism to keep citizens away from wandering thoughts and views and to keep order in the state. Trump uses this same manipulating mechanism through social media and the media to make sure that the manufacturing company doesn’t fall, and he keeps the funds coming through.

In addition to this Orwell’s telescreens and the threat of ‘big brother is watching you’ sounds make-believe, almost as if it never happen today. In modern times people would never let the government put cameras in their homes or location tracker on themselves. Yet by going ahead and using Google, watching our buying smart television and using websites such as Wikipedia, is people doing this to themselves without knowing it, information is never kept private in this generation.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four is more than a work of fiction. It is a dire warning. He thought it would be the state that would control our lives but it is the state and big multinationals. As soon as we sign up to Facebok, Google, Apple or Amazon we have no idea where any of our information, including images, is going. Their dominance in communications and advertising is now so concerning that even Trump and the American congress is calling them to account. Jacinda Adern called world leaders ogether aboout Googles misuse of power. There will be enquiries that may lead to chaneg and reform. This cannot be narrowed just to Google as we all use these platforms. 1984 is here but is much more intrusive than anything Orwell thought would happen.