Tag: George Orwell

Big brother is watching you. Digital spy concept. Based on Generative AI

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William A. Dembski
Date
April 8, 2024

Categorized
Ethics

Tagged
1984, Computers, Dystopian, George Orwell, Wokeness}

Orwell’s Cold Dystopia is Closer Than We Think

_{When we speak lies as truth, tyrants come marching in} _{William A. Dembski
April 8, 2024

23

Ethics}

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. [Winston’s] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him… And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. GEORGE ORWELL, 1984 Read More ›

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 12, 2023

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Censorship, Media, Politics

Tagged
George Orwell}

A Warning From the Unpublished Preface to Orwell’s Animal Farm

_{Only discovered in 1971, the Preface offers George Orwell’s critical but neglected insights into the nature of censorship in a free society} _{Denyse O'Leary
August 12, 2023

6

Arts & Culture, Censorship, Media, Politics}

Orwell noted that the intellectual censorship he encountered was spontaneous — not a campaign or conspiracy — just a sense that people shouldn’t read his work. Read More ›

Post-Human Dystopia - A Cybernetic Future in Neon

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Peter Biles
Date
June 24, 2023

Categorized
Technocracy

Tagged
censorship, COVID-19 (misinformation issue), Facebook, George Orwell, George Orwell on total surveillance, Jacques Ellul, Robert J. Marks, Technology, totalitarianism, Twitter, Walter Bradley}

Jacques Ellul and the Technocratic Society

_{Unhappy is the society dominated by "technique"} _{Peter Biles
June 24, 2023

4

Technocracy}

Jacques Ellul was a twentieth-century writer and philosopher who left us an abundance of riches on the impact of technology on our modern world, or what he called the “technological society.” I’ve been working through his book The Technological Society for a while now. It’s dense, slow reading, but is jam packed with insights. Aside from merely the proliferation and growth of technology in the West over the last century, Ellul notes that we’ve become a culture obsessed with “technique,” performing tasks for efficiency instead of intrinsic purpose, and training ourselves to relate to other people in like manner. What matters under technique’s domination is not morals or human dignity but about outcome and “results,” being bigger, better, and faster. Read More ›

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News
Date
May 25, 2023

Categorized
Surveillance

Tagged
1984 (book), AI, Artificial Intelligence, George Orwell, Surveillance, Technocracy, Technology}

New Surveillance Tech in the UK

_{The debate over security and privacy rights is reaching a new level} _{News
May 25, 2023

1

Surveillance}

The government in the United Kingdom is reportedly working on a new surveillance technology that could monitor the online activity of millions of people. Critics say implementing the tech in practice would be a radical intrusion of privacy. Matt Burgess writes at Wired, Haidar of Privacy International says that creating powers to collect more of people’s data doesn’t result in “more security” for people. “Building the data retention capabilities of companies and a vast range of government agencies doesn’t mean that intelligence operations will be enhanced,” Haidar says. “In fact, we argue that it makes us less secure as this data becomes vulnerable to being misused or abused.” -Matt Burgess, The UK’s Secretive Web Surveillance Program Is Ramping Up | Read More ›

Man and flames, inspired by Fahrenheit 451. Gegenrative AI.

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Peter Biles
Date
April 21, 2023

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Science Fiction

Tagged
1984 (book), Aldous Huxley, Arts & Culture, brave new world, Dystopia, George Orwell, Literature, Ray Bradbury, Science fiction, Technology}

Revisiting Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

_{How can we read and remember the past with the influx of digital noise and distraction?} _{Peter Biles
April 21, 2023

5

Arts & Culture, Science Fiction}

Which one was right, Brave New World or 1984? Are we living in a hedonistic mirage or a totalitarian face-stamping global regime? The conversation over prophetic twentieth-century texts often homes in on these two admirable books, but another classic dystopian novel pokes its head from behind the curtain, asking to be regarded: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. It’s the riotous, mega-talented sci-fi writer’s most famous work (though I’d argue not quite his best) and follows the life of a fireman, Guy Montag, whose main job is not to squelch housefires but to burn books, and the houses that hold them. This fireman is a member of a brigade tasked with the destruction of literature. With the destruction of meaning. In the Read More ›

Lonely Human with water reflection, emotion, sadness loneliness, depression, mental health, fantasy painting, surreal illustration

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Peter Biles
Date
October 21, 2022

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Science Fiction

Tagged
1984 (book), Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (book), C.S. Lewis, emotions, Featured, fiction, George Orwell, Roger Scruton, Science fiction}

Huxley’s Brave New World and the Hard Work of Sadness

_{A society centered on pleasure has no place for mourning, and so has no room for love} _{Peter Biles
October 21, 2022

5

Arts & Culture, Science Fiction}

Ninety years ago, Aldous Huxley published his prophetic and incisive Brave New World (1932), a dystopian novel that imagines a society of people intoxicated and controlled, not by state power, but by pleasure. Whereas George Orwell predicted an inevitable totalitarian world government in his novel 1984 (penned in 1949), Huxley proposed that human beings wouldn’t need to be coerced into submission but could be coaxed by the allure of pain-erasing drugs. Both nightmarish visions of the future have already somewhat played out today in American society. The government set up the Disinformation Governance Board in April of 2022, which sounds eerily like the “Ministry of Truth” in Orwell’s 1984. (The board has since disbanded.) Tech companies can track us more Read More ›

Robot hand pressing computer keyboard enter

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News
Date
September 17, 2021

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Creativity, Machine Learning

Tagged
George Orwell, GPT-3, Predictive text}

English Prof: You’ll Get Used To Machine Writing — and Like It!

_{Yohei Igarashi argues that seamless machine writing is an outcome of the fact that most of what humans actually write is highly predictable} _{News
September 17, 2021

5

Arts & Culture, Creativity, Machine Learning}

English professor Yohei Igarashi, author of The Connected Condition: Romanticism and the Dream of Communication (2019), contends that writing can mostly be automated because most of it is predictable: Instances of automated journalism (sports news and financial reports, for example) are on the rise, while explanations of the benefits from insurance companies and marketing copy likewise rely on machine-writing technology. We can imagine a near future where machines play an even larger part in highly conventional kinds of writing, but also a more creative role in imaginative genres (novels, poems, plays), even computer code itself. Yohei Igarashi, “The cliché writes back” at Aeon (September 9, 2021) Currently, humans’ ability to guess whether it is machine writing, he says, is only Read More ›

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News
Date
April 25, 2021

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Mathematics, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Technocracy

Tagged
1984 (book), George Orwell, totalitarianism}

How Orwell’s 1984 Can Be Seen As an Argument for God’s Existence

_{Atheism is not only fundamental to the power of the Party in 1984 but is also its central weakness} _{News
April 25, 2021

5

Arts & Culture, Mathematics, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Technocracy}

University of Nebraska political science prof Carson Holloway (pictured) asks, “Does discrediting the existence of God promote enlightened thinking or a lack of objective reality?” Unpacking the social structure in George Orwell’s classic totalitarian dystopia, 1984 (1949), he observes that not only does the Party have the power of life and death but the atheistic Party faithful fear death as utter annihilation: Atheism is the moral basis of the Party’s unlimited hold on its own members because it makes them terrified of death as absolute nonexistence. Like any government, the Party in 1984 has the power to kill disobedient subjects. Party members, however, view death not just as the end of bodily life, but as a complete erasure of their Read More ›

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Heather Zeiger
Date
April 22, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Global Technology, Social Media, Technocracy

Tagged
China, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), David Cowhig, George Orwell, Tienanmen Square (massacre)}

China: Snitching on Those Who Recall Non-Approved History

_{The Communist Party of China wants its centennial to proceed this year without memory of the millions dead in the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and Tiananmen Square} _{Heather Zeiger
April 22, 2021

7

Artificial Intelligence, Global Technology, Social Media, Technocracy}

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984 The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was formed on July 23, 1921, so is gearing up for the hundredth anniversary of its founding with the theme “Forever Following the Party.” In preparation, the Cyberspace Administration of China has launched a hotline for citizens to report online statements that contradict the Party’s official version of its history. A translation of the announcement from the Central Network Information Office Reporting Center is available on former American diplomat David Cowhig’s blog: One part of the announcement reads: In order to avoid misleading the public with false statements, maintain a clear cyberspace and create a good atmosphere Read More ›

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News
Date
February 28, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, Religion, Surveillance

Tagged
1984 (book), 2084 (book), Atheism, C. S. Lewis, Featured, George Orwell, God's existence, immortality, John Lennox, Robert J. Marks, That Hideous Strength (book), transhumanism}

Why Oxford’s John Lennox Wrote a Book on AI Promises and Threats

_{His book 2084 leans on George Orwell’s 1984 but takes its inspiration from C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength} _{News
February 28, 2021

12

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, Religion, Surveillance}

Recently, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed Oxford mathematician John Lennox on his latest book 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (2020). He focused on why Lennox chose that theme and how far we have caught up with George Orwell’s 1984. Here are some excerpts from the combined interviews in “John Lennox on Artificial Intelligence and Humanity”: https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-123-John-Lennox.mp3 A partial transcript follows, along with highlights, Show Notes, and Resources: Robert J. Marks (starting at roughly 1:40 min): Many of Orwell’s predictions about communism were proven. So what will be the effects of AI a century later in the year 2084? Replacing George Orwell is Dr. John Lennox who has written 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future Read More ›

Educational kids math toy wooden board stick game counting set in kids math class kindergarten. Math toy kids concept.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
February 16, 2021

Categorized
Education, Mathematics

Tagged
1984 (book), Algebra, Douglas Murray, Edward Feser, G. K. Chesterton, George Orwell, James Lindsay, Nancy Pearcey, Rochelle Gutierrez, War on math}

Yes, There Really Is a War on Math in Our Schools

_{Pundits differ as to the causes but here are some facts parents should know} _{Denyse O'Leary
February 16, 2021

10

Education, Mathematics}

The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) recently encouraged teachers to register for training that encourages “ethnomathematics,” an education trend that argues, “among other things, that White supremacy manifests itself in the focus on finding the right answer”: “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so,” the document for the “Equitable Math” toolkit reads. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.” … An associated “Dismantling Racism” workbook, linked within the toolkit, similarly identifies “objectivity” — described as “the belief that there is such a thing as being objective or ‘neutral’” — as a characteristic of White supremacy. Instead Read More ›

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News
Date
December 3, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Education, Machine Learning

Tagged
bias, Cade Metz, Eric Holloway, George Orwell, GPT-3, OpenAI}

Can a Computer Write Your Paper for You Someday Soon?

_{GPT-3 recently came up with a paragraph that—a pop psychologist agreed—sounded just like him} _{News
December 3, 2020

6

Artificial Intelligence, Education, Machine Learning}

This summer the OpenAI lab, backed by $1 billion in funding from Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, released an updated version of GPT-3, a text generator that produces convincing sentences by analyzing, among other online sources, Wikipedia, countless blog posts, and thousands of digital books. According to a recent story by Cade Metz in the New York Times, one GPT-3 programmer decided to target pop psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman. Could GPT-3 really come up with a paragraph that sounded just like him? Kaufman himself (pictured) was really impressed with this one, on the subject of becoming more creative: I think creative expression is a natural byproduct of growing up in a diverse world. The more diverse the world is, the more Read More ›

Futuristic Science Fiction Bedroom Interior with Planet Earth View in Space Station, 3D Rendering

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News
Date
August 8, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

Tagged
___longform, 1984 (book), Atomic bomb, Captain Kirk (Star Trek), China, George Orwell, H. G. Wells, Innovation, Inventions, Mobile phone, Science fiction, totalitarianism}

When Science Fiction Comes to Life…

_{Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it sometimes grows out of it} _{News
August 8, 2020

7

Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture}

A senior editor at Wired told us a while back that science fiction writer H. G. Wells’s 1914 tale, The World Set Free, formed part of the inspiration for the atomic bomb, exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. … in the novel Wells imagines a new kind of bomb, based on a nuclear chain reaction. In this science fiction story Wells imagines that atomic energy would be discovered in 1933 (20 years in his future), and that the bomb would first explode in 1956. Wikipedia notes, “As fate or coincidence would have it, in reality the physicist Leó Szilárd read the book in 1932, conceived of the idea of nuclear chain reaction in 1933, and filed for patents on it in Read More ›

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
July 2, 2019

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Technocracy

Tagged
1984 (book), Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (book), Dystopia, E. M. Forster, Featured, George Orwell, Longform, Machine Stops (short story)}

1984 is 70 years old yet still feels current

_{Did Orwell prove a better techno-prophet than Huxley did in Brave New World?} _{Denyse O'Leary
July 2, 2019

9

Arts & Culture, Technocracy}

In 1949, Huxley thought he was closer to the mark than his former student Orwell was. Later generations have tussled over the question, with revealing results.

Could AI write novels?

_{George Orwell thought so, as long as no thinking was involved} _{Denyse O'Leary
October 23, 2018

4

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social Factors}

Serious literature will always be written, to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, in “blood, toil, tears and sweat” because imaging the human condition accurately is part of its nature. And if the writer lives in an unfree society, serious literature will also be written in fear. Read More ›