Orwell, Huxley, and the Future of Technology

The race to create ever more efficient gadgets may be closing the gap between Chinese and North American culture.

Every time Apple launches a new product, thousands form lines outside stores hours before they open, impatient to get their hands on the latest iGizmo. We get excited about new gadgets because they’re the materialization of our steps into the future – the manifestation of visions. They give us the feeling of hope that comes with progress; it's exciting.

But technological advancement was not always greeted with enthusiasm. As technology rapidly evolved in the first half of the 20th century, a current of fear swept through society. Technological developments spurred dystopian visions of what might come to pass. It wasn’t all flying cars and robot servants.

With the G20 meetings putting global society in the spotlight recently, it’s a good time to examine how that society has adapted to technology, and what this means for the future.

Two of the greatest visionaries of the impacts of technology on society and politics were George Orwell in his book 1984 and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. Both authors envisioned technology as the ruling party’s tool for control, but their visions of how technology would be used were starkly opposed. As world leaders discussed trade deficits and economic tensions at the G20, elements of the Huxleian and Orwellian visions came into direct contact. And the dichotomies of a consumerist western world and its supplier, China, become ever more apparent.

In 1984, Orwell depicts a society constrained by the authoritarian application of technology – a society where control and limitation reign. Huxley, on the other hand, told of a world constrained by pleasure. Huxley believed that the future dystopia would invoke the facade of freedoms to control the citizenry as opposed to authoritarian means. In Huxley's world, those freedoms are intense promiscuity, a wonderful drug called Soma, full-body cinematic entertainment in the form of the “feelies,” and a society addicted to happiness.

In 1949, Huxley wrote to Orwell, taking issue with the Orwell's prediction of the future. "The lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience," he wrote.

Both of these realities are easy to identify in modern society. Aside from the human genetics manipulation in Brave New World, western culture is startlingly similar to the Huxleian future. Western society is compelled by the pursuit of happiness and of satisfaction from work. Our servitude stems from these ambitions.

On the other side of the equation is the authoritarian regime of the Chinese government. A regime based on control and limitation, censorship and thought work, China is the modernized version of an Orwellian vision of technical and political authoritarianism.

Aside from the moral implications of rule by control versus rule by freedom, the impacts on economic activity and development are sweeping. In the broadest sense, western society is the creative component to our global economy, while China is the manufacturer of it. Nothing sums up the symbiotic relationship better than the message inscribed on every Apple product: "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China."

If we analyze the implications of a Huxleian reality versus an Orwellian one, it is apparent that a society addicted to the fruits of freedom, in which the human spirit naturally adheres to a system of happiness and desire for fulfillment, is more creative, while one bound by constraint and control is the world’s production house.

But Huxley made a further observation in his letter to Orwell: "I feel the nightmare of 1984 is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency." And indeed as the Chinese economy continues with its frantic growth, the authoritarian practices are becoming less pronounced, yet still oppressive. The question we then must ask is, what will happen if China adopts true freedoms for the sake of efficiency? Who will make our gadgets to fuel the future?