How We Killed Privacy

George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four is required reading at some colleges. Private readers who bought it in 1949 when it was published, must have thought the scenario impossible.

The novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Oceania, a country where the government controls everything citizens do. There is no freedom of whatever, freedom we take for granted because it is enshrined in most Constitutions.

What is even more frightening is the government’s ability to read citizens’ mind. That freaked me out. Mothers are telepathic, but there are certain things so embedded in our minds, even them cannot pick up.

Internet and George Orwell’s Book

It’s one and the same thing in different skins. The novel was hard copy, the internet is digital. What’s your point? The point is control. The government controls everything in Oceania, especially the mind. 

With the internet, people volunteer information about what they do, eat, wear and what they think. No force. It’s all voluntary. Sometimes it violates other people’s rights, like the husband who posted that his wife shaves that place, nature took pains to hide.

The internet is so much into our minds, it tells us that babies must wear blue if they are boys and pink if they are girls. Some women even forfeit their safety by telling the world they are single and live alone.

Sports stars share intimate thoughts with Instagram models. They finally meet. They disagree and NBA and NFL careers are ruined but the woman’s photo is seldom displayed.

In the book Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government has ways of gatecrashing the mind. With the internet, we volunteer so much information it sits back and downloads it. 

What we think and plant online enables manufacturers to make new products that accelerate climate change. It helps Google and the whole tech industry to make updates I don’t need.

Therefore, the internet has changed the game. The government is the oppressor in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. We are our own oppressors, in 2021.

This is another ‘written podcast’ from Nonqaba waka Msimang.