And that’s all perfectly legal since you might be a terrorist. The Government might have the right to go into your home and tap your phone and computer.

Sounds familiar? Today’s social score is derived by judging an individual’s credit character based on their activity on social platforms like Facebook of Google. And of course Big Brother doesn’t have to prove you had a criminal thought, just arrest you under the suspicion that you might have. Thought crime in Winston’s world is the act of having any subversive, original or unsanctioned thought, and results in the individual suspected to be ‘vaporised.’ Literally every trace and record of your existence is wiped from the public memory. From technology to criminalization of thought, Orwell’s predictions were, in fact, correct. His prediction was correct as events in his novel are currently happening in modern society.

Orwell hypothesised that if society continued as it was going in his lifetime, by 1984, the world would become similar to the one illustrated in his book. Social media can desensitize emotions and can often create a false sense of communication. This is also relevant to today’s society because of our extensive use of social media. It shows how surveillance destroys the beauty of human interaction and shows how relationships change when using technology. The Circle shows how surveillance interferes with human freedom and human nature.

The Circle confronts readers with several themes related to technology with surveillance being a big part in the movie The Circle where the company is over-run by technology. You think no one is watching? Think again. According to the novel the public had “no way of knowing you were being watched.” We put our thoughts on social media. Nineteen Eighty-Four delivers this concept of thought police the thought police were hired by the government to monitor all telescreens to find certain people who commit a crime against the party.

Today, there is no need for ‘Big Brother’ as we volunteer so much personal information about ourselves on social media already, we’re basically handing it to the government. In Nineteen Eighty-Four technology was a new way to control people with fear, with the party in power, they easily manipulated people with technology and brainwashed the public by putting telescreens in private areas and microphones around the town. Technology, a concept in Nineteen Eighty-Four that is still relevant in modern society today, with the TV show Big Brother, inspired by this novel, it just shows that Nineteen Eighty-Four essentially predicted the future we live in today.

1984 novel