Orwell’s 1984 Today: Living in a Surveillance Society

I sat in the campus library last November, staring at my laptop screen, when a pop-up informed me that my browsing activity had been logged for network security. At the same table, my roommate scrolled through her phone, pausing to show me an ad for hiking boots she had only mentioned in a voice message an hour earlier. Neither of us found this strange. We laughed, screenshotted it, and went back to our work. Later that evening in my political theory seminar, we began discussing George Orwell's *1984*, and I felt a sharp discomfort I could not shake.

The novel depicts a totalitarian state where Big Brother monitors every citizen through telescreens and thought police, crushing individual privacy and freedom. Reading it now, I believe we do live in a surveillance society, though it looks different from Orwell's vision, and we have largely chosen it ourselves.

I first encountered *1984* in high school, but I only skimmed it then, bored by what seemed like outdated paranoia. When I reread it this fall as a sophomore studying political science at Ohio State, the story hit differently. Orwell published the novel in 1949, imagining a future London under perpetual war and oppressive government control. Citizens face constant observation, language is stripped down to Newspeak to limit thought, and history is rewritten to serve the Party. The book was a warning against totalitarianism, drawing on Orwell's experiences with fascism and Stalinism. What shocked me this time was not how distant his world seemed, but how many parallels I could draw to my own life, even though I live in a democracy and carry surveillance devices by choice.

The most obvious comparison is the sheer volume of watching that happens now. In Orwell's Oceania, telescreens in every home broadcast propaganda and record citizens' actions. Today, my phone tracks my location constantly, my laptop camera could be accessed remotely, and cameras watch me in stores, on street corners, and across campus. Last semester I requested my data from Google and received a file showing every place I had been for two years, down to the minute. I felt sick reading it. The difference is that no single government agency ordered this surveillance. I agreed to it, usually without reading the terms, because I wanted free email and map directions. The monitoring is corporate rather than state-run, but the result is the same: a detailed record of my movements, conversations, and interests exists somewhere beyond my control.

Beyond location tracking, the information I produce online shapes what I see and think. Orwell's Ministry of Truth constantly revises history and controls all media, so citizens only encounter one version of reality. I do not face overt censorship, but algorithms decide which news appears in my feed, which videos autoplay next, and which search results I see first. Last spring I noticed that my social media showed me only articles that confirmed my existing political views. When I mentioned this to my professor, she said it was called a filter bubble. I had been living inside one perspective, thinking I was informed, but I was only seeing what engagement metrics determined I wanted to see. Orwell's characters cannot access unapproved information; I can technically access anything, but I am subtly steered toward content that keeps me scrolling, not content that challenges me.

Some of my friends insist this comparison is unfair. They argue that we are not living in a dictatorship, that we can delete apps or turn off location services, and that corporations tracking us for profit is nothing like a government torturing dissidents. One classmate pointed out that surveillance technology also saves lives through medical monitoring and helps solve crimes. I take these objections seriously. Orwell's world involves physical violence, forced labor camps, and the complete absence of legal rights. I am not surveilled by a regime that will vaporize me for thoughtcrime. My concern is not that we have already arrived at Orwell's dystopia, but that we are normalizing the infrastructure that makes such control possible. The tools exist now to monitor everyone, all the time. We trust that they will not be misused, but trust is not a safeguard.

I have started making small changes, not because I think I can escape surveillance entirely, but because I want to remember that privacy matters. I turn off my phone's location except when I need directions. I use a search engine that does not track me. I read news sources I disagree with. These steps feel minor, almost performative, against systems so vast and embedded. Yet I think Orwell would recognize the danger in giving up before trying. His novel ends with Winston Smith broken, loving Big Brother, unable to imagine resistance. I do not want to reach that point of surrender. Whether we call this a surveillance society or just modern convenience, the fact remains that much of my life is recorded, analyzed, and stored. I still do not know how much that should worry me, but I know I should not stop asking.

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