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Sales of George Orwell’s ’1984′ up 69 percent on Amazon
- eksith 13y agoOn one (massively disproportionate) level, this reminds when the sale of the movie Independence Day suddenly spiked after 9/11. Also "As of 10:16 p.m. EDT, sales of Orwell's "1984" are up 126 percent on the Amazon list"
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Intermernet 13y agoIf you're in Australia (and you all are, aren't you <ahem>) you can read the entire text for free at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt . If you're in the USA it may even be illegal to know that it's available for free elsewhere, so delete the knowledge from your mind.
- abhaga 13y agoI am betting so are the searches on Google and sales of ebooks on Apple iStore for "1984". Oh the irony!
- general_failure 13y agoCloud computing in general was not meant to be 'private'.
- herbig 13y agoCliffs notes up 400%
- wilfra 13y agoNow 177%. Here is the reason: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ALN7LTeLxtI# http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ALN7L...!
- m52go 13y agoNow watch this guy fly completely under the radar in 2016, courtesy of MSM. Edit: assuming he runs for office...I guess I'm jumping the gun a bit
- asperous 13y ago(Published on Nov 13, 2012)
- wilfra 13y agoGood catch. Wont delete it since there are two replies but that may not be the reason :)
- hkmurakami 13y agothe video may have been linked to by some popular outlet. We'd be able to find out if we had access to historical view count data but alas...
- seabee 13y agoBut alas, you do: click the bar chart icon under the view count.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- NSAOutreach 13y agoHello, this is new the NSA community outreach program. We proudly announce that, using our PRISM system, we just obtained personal information of anyone who just bought the "1984" from Amazon. Teams have already been sent out to ensure that those terrorists do not harm our country and are not allowed to take away our freedoms. We'd like to thank you for your cooperation in ensuring that our nation continues our democratic traditions, and send our best wishes to you.
- hkmurakami 13y agobah no wonder someone placed a hold on my copy I had from the library (3 weeks ago there were no holds when I got it but now there are a bunch of Pple in line)
- Helianthus 13y agothere are some dead links in this topic that are actually pretty funny.
- sage_joch 13y ago1984 is a pretty incredible book, even without its relevance to current events. It is probably in my top three of all time.
- sinnerswing 13y agoAtlas Shrugged sales up 400%
- mindcrime 13y agoDefinitely in my top three of all time, along with Fahrenheit 451. I'd probably put The Fountainhead in my top 3 to round it out.
- dsaber 13y agoDefinitely, 1984 is a true classic. Out of curiosity, what are the other two books in your list?
- mindcrime 13y agoFor anybody who wants to read it now: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt
- JacksonGariety 13y agoWhen I started reading your comment said "posted 4 minutes ago." Now it says 2 hours. I'm a third of the way done. Thank you.
- a3_nm 13y agoObserve how Nineteen Eighty-Four is in the public domain in Australia, but won't be in the US until at least 2044.
- stiff 13y agoIt's a pity for most people this will be the only Orwell's book they will read, personally I find it one of his weaker ones, I liked "Animal farm", "Down and out in Paris and London" and his essays much more, and his biggest literary achievement is probably "Homage for Catalonia".
- unimpressive 13y agoOrwell's non-fiction is brilliant, and shines much brighter than the books that made him famous. (Animal Farm and 1984). Also, if you'd like to read Homage to Catalonia: http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/index.html http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/index.html I highly recommend it.
- corwinstephen 13y agoThere's also my personal favorite, "A Nice Cup of Tea." http://www.booksatoz.com/witsend/tea/orwell.htm http://www.booksatoz.com/witsend/tea/orwell.htm
- dionidium 13y agoIt's true that Orwell was a much better writer of nonfiction than he was of fiction, but, oddly, reading Burmese Days is what made me realize that. I think it's my favorite of his novels because it's so personal. (Although you can almost get everything you need to know about Burmese Days in much less time by reading "Shooting an Elephant.") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant
- InclinedPlane 13y agoIt's interesting how little improvement in the characterization of power structures heavily intent on limiting individual liberty has occurred over the last half century. 1984 was written in 1948 and Brave New World in 1932. There have certainly been newer works in the same vein, such as V for Vendetta, but they generally have just used the same palette, the same terminology, the same ideological formulations. However, I think those formulations are out of date and their out-of-dateness is harmful to this critical discussion about the nature and importance of liberty and its relationship to governance. Our terminology, our mental models, even our archetypes are best-suited to the world of the 1930s and '40s, not to today. We throw around terms like fascism and tyranny and they lose a lot of their force because they are not really applicable. That's not to say that there is no danger of the industrialized, democratic nations slipping into forms of governance which are every bit as bad as tyranny or fascism, but we must recognize that when we use terminology that is not 100% applicable it makes it that much easier to dismiss or ignore. History is replete with examples of tyrants who have ruled harshly to further their own self-interests or out of a sense of megalomania. But I think we need to recognize that limitations to personal liberty need not be due solely to tyranny or fascism and so forth, there are other forces, other modus operandi at play. People have tried using the term "nanny state", but that has the opposite problem of lacking sufficient gravitas. There is a very real movement that has been underway for over a century to limit individual liberty in the service of the greater good. The war on drugs is an extension of this phenomenon, as are the worst excesses in the war on terror. But lacking good terminology makes this discussion that much more cumbersome and difficult.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- msg 13y agoStalin's Russia is no longer the touchstone it once was, in other words. I don't think that you can't apply the critique in 1984 to current events. There is just a generation gap. GWB is a kind of touchstone for the modern generation, helpless while events swirl around him, grasping for a measure of control at all costs. And what costs they were: torture, surveillance, war, a Manichaean division of the world into heroes and villains. Instead of intentions of powerful men, you have the psychoses of bureaucracies created by individuals for all the right reasons, full of unintended effects, ultimately achieving the opposite of their stated goals. In 1984, there is a malevolence at the back of Big Brother. In 2013, there need not be anything but a decentralized system, harnessing the latest technologies, manipulated by the knowledgeable, but ultimately storyless, aimless, and inhuman.
- etfb 13y agoI'd like to know the names and addresses of the people who ordered it. Does anyone have a phone number for someone in the Department of Homeland Security I can ask?
- danso 13y agoWell-deserved...is there a high school classic that is so thematically substantive and yet also such an accessible, enjoyable page turner? Yes, in retrospect, of course there wasn't going to be a revolution, but you weren't so pessimistic and cynical back in 10th grade. Also, I think I owe my latent fear to rodents to that book's finale. "Shooting an Elephant" also deserves to be mentioned almost as much as 1984, in terms of lessons in civics and human psychology.
- ianstormtaylor 13y agoTo anyone who wants to buy their own copy, use the EFF affiliate link first: http://www.amazon.com/?tag=electronicfro-20 http://www.amazon.com/?tag=electronicfro-20
- dm2 13y agoRight now it's up 3,770% Here is the movie on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDbWtbCHt7g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDbWtbCHt7g Edit: I can't watch old movies... needs more special effects.
- orwell 13y agohttp://is.gd/orwell_1984 http://is.gd/orwell_1984
- jermaink 13y agohttps://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=George+Orwell+1984#q=%221984+book%22&cmpt=q https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=George+Orwell+1984#q...
- liotier 13y agoAlso, Enemy Of The State is currently the most uploaded movie from my Bittorrent shares...
- gioele 13y agoAh, the irony: 1984 was the first book to be removed from Kindles using the remote Amazon kill switch [1], another plain violation of many basic human rights (first of all, the "right to read" [2]). [1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090717/1559425587.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090717/1559425587.shtml [2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
- hysterix 13y agoWhen people ask why I pirate pdf's, I point to instances like this. I want full control over my hardware, my software and the like. The fact this happened gives in my opinion, more ammunition to the side claiming piracy is equal to actually owning your content, drm free.
- pointernil 13y agoAre works like "1984" or "Brave New World" presenting to us such fundamentally touching truths that they actually become self fulfilling prophesies? Are those so elementary truths that they become building blocks of our thinking, shaping our above mentioned [1] terminology, our mental models, even our archetypes? Is there any fiction presenting us with a future outlook we would actually want to be become self fulfilling prophesies? What is social fiction in contrast to science fiction? __ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5860077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5860077
- alan_cx 13y agoAlthough I'm a self confessed fanboi, I recommend watching Babylon 5. In places it's one hell of a scary prophecy.
- kryten 13y agoIf only these people had already read the book...
- fallous 13y agoI'd recommend "It Couldn't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis as a more appropriate choice.
- cpursley 13y agoThe irony. If there were ever a place to spy on what Americans are reading, it would be Kindle.
- programminggeek 13y agoUm, only 69%, that's not even double. I'm not even sure that's enough to day that there is as much of a public outrage over this as the tech crowd seems to have.