Oversaturation
Hi! I haven't posted to LJ very regularly of late. It occurred to me this morning that the reason is that I've been having real face-to-face discussions for the past two weeks about things I normally post about. How old fashioned of me! I guess it got the urge to share out my system. I must have an innate need to do it one way or another. :)
However, camillofan posted a couple days ago about her disillusionment at her students not "getting" her cultural references. That reminded me (albeit in a sideways kind of way) of something I read recently:
[Regarding] the famous anti-utopian novels: George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Orwell was predicting what the future would be like under Communism; Huxley was predicting the future in the West.
Both books have proved to be disturbingly accurate.
Orwell foresaw a Communist government that would ban books; Huxley foresaw a Western government that wouldn't need to ban them - because no one would read serious books anymore. Orwell predicted a society deprived of information; Huxley predicted a society oversaturated by information from electronic media - until people lost the ability to analyze what they saw and heard. Orwell feared a system that concealed the truth; Huxley feared a system where people stopped caring about truth and cared only about what made them feel good.
Today these two scenarios sound frighteningly familiar. Orwell's book described life in a totalitarian state, more prominently the collapsed Communist regime. But Huxley's book opens a window on our own society.
(Colson, 1997, pg. 79)
However, camillofan posted a couple days ago about her disillusionment at her students not "getting" her cultural references. That reminded me (albeit in a sideways kind of way) of something I read recently:
[Regarding] the famous anti-utopian novels: George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Orwell was predicting what the future would be like under Communism; Huxley was predicting the future in the West.
Both books have proved to be disturbingly accurate.
Orwell foresaw a Communist government that would ban books; Huxley foresaw a Western government that wouldn't need to ban them - because no one would read serious books anymore. Orwell predicted a society deprived of information; Huxley predicted a society oversaturated by information from electronic media - until people lost the ability to analyze what they saw and heard. Orwell feared a system that concealed the truth; Huxley feared a system where people stopped caring about truth and cared only about what made them feel good.
Today these two scenarios sound frighteningly familiar. Orwell's book described life in a totalitarian state, more prominently the collapsed Communist regime. But Huxley's book opens a window on our own society.
(Colson, 1997, pg. 79)