~bartender, give me some orange juice, I need another one later on.
Many people would think that we are going towards 1984 as we speak. However, I do not believe entirely that our society will go only to that direction. Age restriction is good on paper, but on practice just restricts what we can see, but also puts social media companies and the tech companies underlying them on lots of pressure. If some governments try to set up age verification, then in the best case, some competent tech companies would just file million dollar lawsuits. So it’s not entirely going to happen, there will be pushback by some companies.
However, I believe that there is a situation bigger than this. The reason why age restriction and privacy-breaking laws are passed is because people trade convince over everything.
With the rise of social media, and quick based algorithms. People are looking into screens now more than ever. (Im not saying it’s not an entirely bad thing by itself) With that our brains are becoming numb. With companies are profiting off of them more than ever. So, at some point our government (or any country that reaches to that stage of technology) has to capitalize our short attention spans if it wants to adapt.
With this convenience, people are not reading books that much. And with the rise of more banned books, this could culminate in a basic ban of books.
That is the setting of Farenhight 451, in which society is saturated with flashy screens, with slap-stick participation. And we are not far from that.
If a competent dictatorial person takes control we could get something like the setting of 1984. Yet how can a competent person can emerge if he or she is trapped in a corporate, and algorithmic based world?
So, it’s not likely that we are going to 1984, yet we might be going towards a farenhight 451 situation.
I dont fear the government, the wigs, the congress men, the congress women or even the president. I fear the carpenter, the mason, the boatman, the shoemaker, the wood-cutter, the ploughboy, the mother, the young wife, the little girl or anyone who sings with open mouths their strong melodious songs. Who are ignorant to the suppression and censorship of our kind.