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1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell
- stcredzero 17y ago1984 again? I wonder if there should be a "recurring" page? Maybe call it a "classics" page? This might be good for reddit, since it has the semi-random box at the top. Such links of proven interest could be randomly shown there. This would be a great tool for catching the eye of new users, with proven great content. It could then be turned off by veteran users. This would give the best of both worlds. New users could be introduced to great links they missed, and veteran users wouldn't have to deal with "dupes."
- rmp 17y agoAs someone who came here from reddit because it was turning into digg, I agree. The quality of the articles and comments on HN is amazing and it's great to be able to come here and actually be interested in every link without having to skip past all the images of cute animals and political trash. I am aware that the number of users and the quality of a site like this is inversely correlated, so I think taking every action to preserve the original idea and intent of HN should be a high priority of the members here. Thanks for bringing me great tech links HN!
- madair 17y agoThe regulars who wring their hands over HN or whatever other site going down hill really should just go find somewhere else to read.
- pg 17y agoIt's not the real regulars who wring their hands over this-- more the users who've been here 5 months or so. It seems to be a phase people go through.
- madair 17y agoThank you. Since 5 months will come up soon for me, I'll try not to go through it too :-D
- ivankirigin 17y agoThose that complain and mean it leave. Those that complain and don't will have stopped complaining about it.
- pg 17y agoThe people who stick around aren't so much the ones who didn't mean it when they said, after a bad day, that HN was going to the dogs. I think more often they simply noticed that the next day everything was fine again.
- zandorg 17y agoI personally think that personal computing, computing in general and the Internet/Web has moved us far far away from Orwell's nightmare world. For even a tiny example, logistics software allowing transport costs to plummet and more products deliverable. And yes, I've read 1984 and various books on Stalin and the Soviets.
- eru 17y agoInterestingly one can imagine the book's Oceania to resemble North Korea. I.e. it's "just" an isolated dictatorship in England; the image conveyed of the rest of the world is just propaganda.
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- bitwize 17y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=585153 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=585153 Cereal Killer respectfully disagrees.
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- zandorg 17y ago"I used to work for a company" Note highlights... Company, not government. That's data protection, not politics.
- briansmith 17y agoThe companies readily turn it over to the government.
- nazgulnarsil 17y agothe government is a corporation. it's just a corporation with a monopoly on protection and really good marketing (how many people will die for apple?)
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- RobertL 17y agoOf all the characters I've read and watched over the years Winston Smith is still the one I relate to the most. And Orwell really understood women. I've had many deja vu's back to the novel 1984 over the years and it was usually watching some woman responding emotionally to some speaker or some event and the deja vu goes back to the scene early in the book where the women are responding to the daily pep rally from Big Brother.
- cturner 17y agoI read Yevgeny Zamyatin's _We_ recently, and recommend. It has a more lighthearted style generally but the ending is still fairly devestating. There's just been a new translation released and it hides most of the cultural problems well and is just honest about the one it couldn't (character using a polite version of a pronoun).
- nazgulnarsil 17y agoI feel 1984 is the weakest of the classic distopia triumvirate (We, BNW, 1984). We and BNW are both scarier because they are plausible. Many people read BNW in particular and say "that doesn't seem so bad".
- dangoldin 17y agoCan't forget Fahrenheit 451. I think it's more approachable than We and I think more people have read it. I became a fan of Dystopian Literature after reading that book and have been amassing a collection since.
- dan_the_welder 17y agoWait, are you saying that 1984 is implausible? We actually have newspeak, constant surveillance, the bumbling inept bureaucracy and crumbling infrastructure he predicts. It's a pretty accurate vision as far as I see it and the Department of Homeland Security/CIA/NSA are merely a step removed from the Ministry of Truth. Long live Oceania!
- brown9-2 17y agoI'm curious about this new translation - do you know who it was translated/published by? The most recent edition on Amazon I can find is from 2006, I'm interested in checking out the new translation based on your comments but not sure if this is the same one.
- cturner 17y agoI'm mistaken about this. I confused it with the new translation of Pushkin's _Eugene_Onegin_, now by Stanley Mitchell (2008). My edition of _We_ was published in 1993.
- azgolfer 17y agoAnimal Farm is much more to the point today. And it's not Big Brother, but Big Mother, that has taken over.