tyranny.
Well, one thing is true, and this is that authoritarianism is no monopoly of the big powers. Africa is full of nasty little tyrannies. Territories that were supposed to have groaned under the colonial yoke gained liberation only to set up dictatorships. Go to Singapore, where Mr Lee presides over a clean unmalarial heaven of free trade. His political opponents are in jail or abroad on courses of what is called self-education. The police drag long-haired youths to compulsory barber-chairs. The media have that bland, uncontroversial quality you associate with FrancoâsSpain â society weddings, bonny babies, kittens in ribbons. Cinematic candour is called pornography. I lived in Malta for a few years in an atmosphere of censored books and banned films, lingerie advertisements solemnly snipped out of imported British newspapers so that the youth of Malta might not be inflamed. The Maltese government confiscated my house, still full as it was of possibly incriminating books and papers. There are a host of repressive governments everywhere, their tyranny animated by the hypocrisy of doing what is considered âbest for the peopleâ. OâBrienâs candid admission that Ingsoc seeks power for its own sake is, compared with the small tyrannical liars, positively healthy
.
Letâs think of the bigger, older, genuine democracies for a moment. What we ought to be looking for is signs of inroads on personal freedom. Thereâs no doubt that technologies of oppression exist, of a kind that makes Orwellâs snooping Thought Police seem very primitive. Now what worries me is the difficulty of making up my mind about these technologies. I donât want to be led into condemning technology in itself. Take the computer. Norbert Wiener and Warren McCulloch developed it as an aspect of legitimate philosophical investigation into the way the brain works â see how far a machine can simulate a human brain, and then whatâs left over is the essentially human â but it was inevitable that cybernetics should become a
useful
science, and we all know how usefulness tends to be interpreted â in terms of control over what can be controlled, and that mostly means human beings.
A computer is a neutral thing. Information is a neutral commodity. The more information we have the better. Thatâs the way I look at memory banks and so on
.
But once the State gets hold of computers itâs led on to the inevitable path of amassing information about its citizens. I donât know whether thatâs bad in itself, but Iâm thinking of what happened in 1971 in safe, free, democratic little England â
You mean the Census?
Look at the things the State wanted to know. Status of head of household, relationship to other members of household, how many cars owned, did the cook have an oven, was the toilet inside the house, country of origin, country of parentsâ origin, previous addresses, education, marital status, number of children, and so on. Some refused to fill in the form, but the vast majority meekly complied. 800 tons of paper, 105 000 enumerators, £10 000 000 of the taxpayersâ money. But only 500 prosecutions. There was a maximum fine of £50 for not answeringquestions. Alan Sillitoe, the novelist, gave his age as a hundred and one and was fined £25. A man of seventy-three and a woman of sixty-six werenât able to pay the fine attendant on their passion for privacy, so both went to prison. Then it was revealed by the department of the Registrar General that some of this secret information was going to be leaked to commercial organizations. One firm said boastfully that it would have details of 90 per cent of the entire population on its computers by 1980. The police easily get access to this kind of stored information. 152 800 people whoâd been patients in psychiatric hospitals have had the most intimate details of their lives computerized. Intelligence levels,
Well, one thing is true, and this is that authoritarianism is no monopoly of the big powers. Africa is full of nasty little tyrannies. Territories that were supposed to have groaned under the colonial yoke gained liberation only to set up dictatorships. Go to Singapore, where Mr Lee presides over a clean unmalarial heaven of free trade. His political opponents are in jail or abroad on courses of what is called self-education. The police drag long-haired youths to compulsory barber-chairs. The media have that bland, uncontroversial quality you associate with FrancoâsSpain â society weddings, bonny babies, kittens in ribbons. Cinematic candour is called pornography. I lived in Malta for a few years in an atmosphere of censored books and banned films, lingerie advertisements solemnly snipped out of imported British newspapers so that the youth of Malta might not be inflamed. The Maltese government confiscated my house, still full as it was of possibly incriminating books and papers. There are a host of repressive governments everywhere, their tyranny animated by the hypocrisy of doing what is considered âbest for the peopleâ. OâBrienâs candid admission that Ingsoc seeks power for its own sake is, compared with the small tyrannical liars, positively healthy
.
Letâs think of the bigger, older, genuine democracies for a moment. What we ought to be looking for is signs of inroads on personal freedom. Thereâs no doubt that technologies of oppression exist, of a kind that makes Orwellâs snooping Thought Police seem very primitive. Now what worries me is the difficulty of making up my mind about these technologies. I donât want to be led into condemning technology in itself. Take the computer. Norbert Wiener and Warren McCulloch developed it as an aspect of legitimate philosophical investigation into the way the brain works â see how far a machine can simulate a human brain, and then whatâs left over is the essentially human â but it was inevitable that cybernetics should become a
useful
science, and we all know how usefulness tends to be interpreted â in terms of control over what can be controlled, and that mostly means human beings.
A computer is a neutral thing. Information is a neutral commodity. The more information we have the better. Thatâs the way I look at memory banks and so on
.
But once the State gets hold of computers itâs led on to the inevitable path of amassing information about its citizens. I donât know whether thatâs bad in itself, but Iâm thinking of what happened in 1971 in safe, free, democratic little England â
You mean the Census?
Look at the things the State wanted to know. Status of head of household, relationship to other members of household, how many cars owned, did the cook have an oven, was the toilet inside the house, country of origin, country of parentsâ origin, previous addresses, education, marital status, number of children, and so on. Some refused to fill in the form, but the vast majority meekly complied. 800 tons of paper, 105 000 enumerators, £10 000 000 of the taxpayersâ money. But only 500 prosecutions. There was a maximum fine of £50 for not answeringquestions. Alan Sillitoe, the novelist, gave his age as a hundred and one and was fined £25. A man of seventy-three and a woman of sixty-six werenât able to pay the fine attendant on their passion for privacy, so both went to prison. Then it was revealed by the department of the Registrar General that some of this secret information was going to be leaked to commercial organizations. One firm said boastfully that it would have details of 90 per cent of the entire population on its computers by 1980. The police easily get access to this kind of stored information. 152 800 people whoâd been patients in psychiatric hospitals have had the most intimate details of their lives computerized. Intelligence levels,
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