Why 1984 Didn't Happen.

The assignment was simple--discuss George Orwell's penetrating novel "1984."

It was an assignment I told my 16-year-old daughter that reminded me that I had the same task when 1984 was a long distance in the future, and seemed likely to happen. But the year came and went, and Orwell's vision was not the one we have lived in since the target year.
Why didn't Orwell's world of three superpowers in ever-changing alliances, of carefully controlled language and the ability to rewrite the past at will come about, no matter how inevitable those developments may have once seemed?

Two unforeseen trends derailed that movement--The development of individual control over data and religious and national ferment.

Orwell's world relied on controlled data and the mainframe centered world that existed before 1984 was ideal for creating the belief we were headed towards a truly effective Big Brother. But as the pictures from the repression in Mynamar shows, controlling information has gotten tougher. The move toward democratization of data started with the PC and then continued with the development of the Internet and steamrolled along with hand-held voice and data devices.

The other development was the power of two older movements--religion and nationalism--to challenge the regime in the Soviet Union that was founded on economic theory--Communism.
The power of religion resonates with radical Islam in the Middle East and, in some sense, it simmers with those in the United States who would be happier with religion as part of day-to-day government. It is embodied in the fact that Israel exists and is opposed. It gave the worker's movement in Poland a base to challenge the Soviet system. It threatens to shake the generals in Myanmar.

The spread of nationalism has been part of the last 200 years, although it was seriously sidetracked by the Russian Revolution and the spread of Communism. But the fact that countries that have often not been independent, such as Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania once again exist and Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia split apart, and the arrival of so many new nations across the globe, is a tribute to the power of nationalism.

Big Brother may be watching. But he's not always in control.