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What Orwell described is a matter of degree, not a different state of affairs. His criticisms were of the mechanisms of power enabled by the mechanisms of media
by danharaj 6y ago
What Orwell described is a matter of degree, not a different state of affairs. His criticisms were of the mechanisms of power enabled by the mechanisms of media in the era of industrialized civilization. His efforts were towards a future where we transcend that era in favor of democratic socialism. In his own words:
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects."
- shadowgovt 6y agoIf the degree is still such that other search engines return Churchill, and Google also returns Churchill if you make clear your intent (https://www.google.com/search?q=winston+churchill&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=winston+churchill&tbm=isch), I think we can relax a bit on the fear of Big Brotherism.
- danharaj 6y agoI certainly don't think it's Big Brother* at work here but it is worth pondering what it means that communication is so centralized that the idiosyncrasy of a single point of access can affect billions of people. For every quirk that is noticed, what goes unnoticed? * especially since, like, Big Brother as it exists loves Winston Churchill
- shadowgovt 6y agoThat's always a good point. Decisions that Google makes do have wide-sweeping impact. This bug is minor; the decision to have top-boxes at all (for example, the fact that there's a result at all for "World War II leaders" and it includes specific people and excludes others) is a feature and has billions-of-users reach.