2020 Wasn’t 1984, But It Came Really Close.

How close we came to living in George Orwell’s dystopia

This year was bad. In fact, it was worse than bad — it was terrible. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down countries around the world, hundreds of thousands of people died, and I watched the finale of Game of Thrones alone — in the dark.

But amidst all the bad news, there is something to be thankful for. Though I spent two-thirds of the year staring at a smartphone, it didn’t stare back. Though I talked a lot with friends and family, no one else knows what we talked about. Though I used the Internet 47% more than usual, you don’t know what I was doing. Privacy and free speech survived — the year wasn’t 1984.

But it could have been.

Smartphones, AKA Telescreens

As I said, I was glued to my smartphone throughout the pandemic. Mostly, I was watching vampire TV shows and GOT. But other times, I was doing important stuff, like reading my email, writing my college application and Tweeting. Sometime between then and now, I realized that my smartphone knows more about me than my own sister. It’s scary.

George Orwell was no scientist, but he wrote about the smartphone long before IBM invented it (What?! Big Blue invented the smartphone?). Only he called it the telescreen— it could see, hear and speak. We’ve even taken the definition one step further — our modern-day telescreens follow us wherever we go, tell everyone else about our lives, dictate our actions, and gather our personal data to fund The Party.

Where Is The Party?

The Party is the dictatorship that rules Oceania, in 1984. During my research, I expected to find it holed up in some underground bunker in South Korea, or somewhere in the Amazon. In fact, most of its buildings are stunning glass masterpieces, glinting in the sunlight of Silicon Valley.

1, Apple Park Way, Cupertino, CA

Though tech companies want us to believe that they are nice and friendly, they are the opposite. Apple Inc is the world’s most efficient money printer, worth almost $2 trillion. And despite all the beautiful foliage at its office complex, it’s the world HQ of The Party.

Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite

I’ve never played Fortnite — high-end devices that support the game are too expensive for me and fellow proles— but I understand what’s happening here. Epic Games isn’t playing ball with Apple.

Actually, it’s deeper than that. Apple has a huge 30% cut of all in-app revenue on App Store apps, money that would belong to developers otherwise. Though I doubt that the money alone motivated Epic (it’s valued at $17.3 billion — money ain’t no problem), three-tenths is just too much.

Sadly, Apple is going to win.

The iPhone

Ever used an Android phone? I’ve noticed that Google is more lenient with its Play Store regulations (though it still extorts its own 30%), and allows more apps into the playground. Apple is different.

I’m a developer — I make apps. And I know that I can write an Android app in Java (a very useful, general-purpose language, I might add) and have it on the Play Store in a few hours. But with Apple, I have to learn a new language (Swift — which is not good for anything but Apple apps BTW) and wait almost a month to get approved.

Don’t forget — no one knows what’s inside an iPhone, except Apple.

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA

I was expecting this. Behold! Google’s HQ. Though not as sci-fi as Apple Park, it is still a powerhouse and the centre of the world. Google is immortal, omniscient, and omnipresent. It is basically the engine powering the Internet. And believe me, it’s bigger than you think.

Google is everything

Quick question: How many Google products and services do you know? Before doing my research, I knew only eleven. Turns out, there are over a hundred. We all know Gmail, but do you know that Google owns reCaptcha? (that pesky pop-up that makes you doubt your humanity — are you a robot?). Or that they own Waze. Or Blogger. Or Android OS.

They also make smartphones, laptops, VR headsets, home assistants, self-driving cars, Internet balloons, and glasses.

It sounds awfully similar to the ironically-named Ministry of Plenty. It claims to be great and helpful, but is it? I don’t think so.

But here we are, almost at the end of the year, and the end of an interesting article. I wrote this without looking over my shoulder — although my webcam may be watching me, I’m not going to be tortured by Miniluv. All around the world, there’s a wave of activism going round, from the anti-racist protests in America to student protests in Hong Kong. Privacy may be dead, but free speech lives.

And that’s something to be grateful for.

If there’s anything else you are grateful for during the pandemic, tell me in the comments, and maybe on Twitter. Also, eat a hamburger — celebrate freedom while it lasts.

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