Discovery_George Orwells 1984
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00:00Big Brother, Comrade. Big Brother loves you.
00:05Big Brother is watching you.
00:08War is peace.
00:12Double think, Comrade. Double think.
00:15Freedom is slavery.
00:19The Thought Police, Comrade. Welcome to the Ministry of Love.
00:24Ignorance is faith.
00:28It is one of the 20th century's most widely read books.
00:32A direct warning against the madness that lurks in modern times.
00:37George Orwell set this nightmare tale in England, in what was then the near future.
00:43It was a Cold War novel.
00:45And yet today, years after the Iron Curtain has come down,
00:49it continues to warn against a serious flaw in human nature.
00:54The lust for total power and control.
01:00Written in the late 1940s, this historic book was given a short, memorable title.
01:24It was a cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.
01:53George Orwell's novel, 1984, begins with clocks tolling 13 times.
02:011,300 hours. The precise, efficient, 24-hour clock.
02:06The time of the police and of the military.
02:12The time of authority.
02:23Winston Smith is the central character of the book.
02:26Depressed, in poor health and trapped, he is the ultimate anti-hero.
02:37He is a minor member in the outer ring of the inner party, known as Ingsoc.
02:42This was Orwell's satirical jab at the English Socialists,
02:46a major left-wing political party in Britain at the time of the Second World War.
02:53The year of 1984 was still a quarter of a century away
02:57when Orwell began writing the book, shortly after the end of the war.
03:06In the future world of the book, society had been divided into three great superpowers.
03:12England and the United States had become a totalitarian society called Oceania.
03:18The USSR was a dictatorship called Eurasia, and China and its allies were known as East Asia.
03:26The three superpowers waged endless wars.
03:43In Orwell's nightmare vision, television was a tool of the party.
03:48Developed as two-way devices, telescreens blared propaganda,
03:52while built-in cameras spied on people around the clock.
03:56They wanted to catch them with bad thoughts, a criminal activity called thought crime.
04:08People just disappeared, without a trace. No one dared question anything.
04:15Reading Orwell, what is terrifying is the absence of all hope.
04:21You go in there, and there is no way to resist.
04:24There's no way to remain a normal human being within that machinery.
04:29You see, Orwell didn't think necessarily that the war had ended in 1945, and a lot of people didn't.
04:36Would the Soviets stay at the accidental military line where they ended?
04:41I think people who now go back and say, well, Orwell was a Cold War warrior,
04:46you know, and his hatred of communism was out of proportion.
04:49I think they just lack any historical perspective.
04:53Enemy of the people, Comrade Rosenblum, was executed for participating in a plot
04:58to assassinate Big Brother and several cabinet members.
05:00Comrade Rosenblum's public hanging was scheduled for Saturday on the ministry's Asbury Square scaffold.
05:06Winston Smith toils in the bowels of an Ingsoc party ministry, the Ministry of Truth.
05:13Times 14284, many plenty malquoted chocolate.
05:19His daily orders are to rewrite history, literally.
05:23Rewrite for wise.
05:28The previous version of the truth is packed away and thrown down the memory hole.
05:33It is party policy rigidly enforced to maintain absolute control.
05:39In the totalitarian society Orwell describes,
05:43there are the elite party members and the proletariat.
05:47The party ignores the proles and feeds them poor food,
05:52poor alcohol and poor books.
06:00The books are so bad that Orwell describes them as being written by machines
06:04One of the novel's main characters is Julia.
06:07Orwell never gave her a last name.
06:10She works in the fiction department, a bureau of the Ministry of Truth.
06:15It is a wonderful Orwell twist.
06:19Julia isn't a writer.
06:21She is a mechanic, maintaining the clanking machines
06:25that automatically write pornographic fiction.
06:29He was satirizing the meanness and beastliness of man,
06:32not just political systems, but of man himself.
06:36And the picture that you get is of an extreme picture of human behavior.
06:42In 1984, those who control the past, ran the party slogan,
06:47control the future.
06:49And those who control the present,
06:51control the future.
06:55For the citizens of Oceania, Ingsoc controlled everything.
07:08His bouts with the lung disease were becoming worse.
07:13The remote windswept isle seems like a difficult place
07:17for a dying man to have chosen.
07:21As a result of his poor health,
07:23Orwell, usually a quick and prolific writer,
07:26spent almost three years writing 1984.
07:30He was a very puritanical man.
07:32He didn't enjoy creature comforts.
07:34He didn't want to sit comfortably by a roaring fire,
07:37having a lovely time.
07:39Also, he was so far from hospital,
07:41he didn't want to go to the hospital.
07:44He didn't want to go to the hospital.
07:47Also, he was so far from hospital when he was in such poor health.
07:55I think he may have thought there was going to be a nuclear war.
07:59I mean, I think Jura would have been a very safe place
08:02had there been a direct hit on London.
08:04Jura's a much harsher landscape.
08:07Most of it is mountainous.
08:09It's what the Scots call a crofting country.
08:11Very, very small farms indeed.
08:18MUSIC PLAYS
08:25He wanted to be on his own.
08:27I think the image in his mind was the countryside.
08:40It was a place where he could be immune
08:44from the interruptions of London
08:47and could be left to himself to write.
08:50A lot of writers, after all, think of this,
08:53but they usually choose the south of France
08:55with good train connections.
08:59George Orwell was his pen name.
09:03He was born Eric Arthur Blair in Bengal, India, in 1903.
09:09His father was a minor civil servant in a colonial agency.
09:15The family managed to get young Eric into Eton,
09:18where he did not excel academically, although he loved to read.
09:22I interviewed a very old man who had been one of his masters at Eton
09:27who just cursed him for being a slacker and wasting the time,
09:31but he still remembered vividly his annoyance at Orwell,
09:35throwing away the chances that were offered him.
09:38But when I began to put leading questions to him,
09:41that, after all, he did do a hell of a lot of reading,
09:44he said, yes, yes, yes, oh, he did a lot of reading,
09:47but it wasn't on the syllabus.
09:51In the 1920s and 30s,
09:53Orwell developed his writing as a journalist and political essayist.
09:57One of his first books was about the devastated lives of the poor
10:01in Paris and in London.
10:05He had decided not to publish under his real name, Eric Blair.
10:09Instead, he chose to call himself George Orwell.
10:13But, of course, if you fail with a first book as a young man or young woman,
10:18then you can start off with another name or go back to your real name.
10:26As an economic depression spread across the globe in the 1930s
10:30and old hatreds flared into wars,
10:33Orwell had much to observe and write about.
10:36It was a terrible time in world history.
10:53Years later, as he worked on 1984
10:56and the isolation of the island farmhouse,
10:59he reflected on the two decades of world war,
11:02genocide and torture that had just passed.
11:05Orwell projected these terrifying trends into the future.
11:09What if, he thought, what if?
11:16What if a tyrant were to take the idea of a minute of silence,
11:20common on national memorial days,
11:23and turn it on its head?
11:29The two-minute hate exercise lured even the reluctant
11:33into its hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness,
11:36a desire to kill, to torture,
11:39to smash faces in with a sledgehammer.
11:46You see, this is a naughty piece of Orwell's black humour.
11:50It's sardonic humour.
11:52Instead of the two minutes remembrance for the dead,
11:55it's more of the two minutes willing the other side to be dead.
12:07Orwell had lived through an era when Hitler and Stalin
12:10often whipped up national hysteria
12:12to rid themselves of political enemies.
12:15To satirise the tyrants,
12:17he had created the ultimate enemy of Big Brother.
12:21Goldstein was the target for the rage of Oceania's citizens.
12:25Goldstein was a thinly disguised reference to Trotsky,
12:29Stalin's political rival, who was eventually assassinated.
12:40Each two-minute hate would always end with Big Brother reappearing on the screen,
12:46to the relief of everyone in Oceania.
12:51The hates were Orwellian satire,
12:54aimed at political leaders who dream of total control
12:57over the minds of each and every citizen.
13:01In the last half a century,
13:03mass demonstrations and organised hates
13:06have been a regular feature of television news.
13:09But television itself has also become an instrument for manipulating hatred.
13:15We hated Saddam Hussein
13:17and we had some reason to think that we ought to hate him.
13:20Then we hated Osama bin Laden.
13:22We don't know what he's done really,
13:24but we hate him and our hate is kept going.
13:27We used to hate Gaddafi,
13:29but we've sort of stopped hating Gaddafi
13:31because things in Libya have calmed down a bit.
13:33But undoubtedly, over the next year or two,
13:35there will be other hate people set up for us.
13:38And of course it's true,
13:40that we all long to hate.
13:42There's something in us that likes to hate
13:44and Orwell was very, very perceptive about that.
13:491984 was published at the beginning of the Cold War,
13:53a period of intense hatred and fear.
13:56And the book was quickly taken up
13:58as an ideological weapon by the West against the East.
14:03The irony is that George Orwell's politics
14:07The irony is that George Orwell's politics
14:10were decidedly left-wing.
14:12Later he argued that he had written the book in outrage,
14:16a blast against totalitarianism anywhere,
14:19in the West as well as in the Soviet Union.
14:22But there is no doubt
14:24Orwell held a seething hatred for Stalin.
14:27A decade before he began to write 1984,
14:30he had experienced the terror of totalitarian power
14:34during the Civil War in Spain.
14:43The Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936.
14:47It was a classic confrontation for modern times.
14:50The rich against the poor.
14:58Fascists against communists.
15:02The right versus the left.
15:04It was also a puppet show preamble to the main event,
15:08which would soon explode, World War II.
15:15Orwell quickly obtained journalist credentials
15:18and with his bride Eileen headed for Barcelona.
15:21He wanted to be more than just a war correspondent.
15:27He's supposed to have told his publisher
15:29when he asked him why he was going,
15:31well, someone's got to kill fascists.
15:33I mean, he's much more like an early American Republican.
15:36You know, if you feel there's injustice,
15:39you unsling your gun from the cottage or farmstead door
15:45and you go out and join the militia.
15:48And he did just that,
15:50joining up with a workers' militia called the POUM, the POUM.
15:55He knew the POUMistas were fighting the right-wing fascists,
15:58but he knew little about the political complexities of the Spanish left.
16:02There was vicious infighting between some of the workers' groups
16:05and the communist forces, supported by the Russian Communist Party.
16:09Orwell was soon caught up in more than one war.
16:14And this is, I think, the hardest thing for non-Spaniards to understand,
16:19especially in America,
16:20we associate the communists with a revolutionary line.
16:24And here in Spain, the communists were actually against the revolution.
16:28And that's what I think is very confusing for us to understand.
16:31But I think in this case, the communists in Spain
16:34were following the foreign policy concerns of the Soviet Union and Stalin
16:39rather than the concerns of the workers within Spain.
16:43Stalin was concerned that a victory for the workers in Spain
16:47would alarm Western nations.
16:50He wanted total power over where and when
16:53workers would revolt against their bosses.
16:56Orwell was outraged at the Russians' betrayal.
17:06During a skirmish in April 1936,
17:09Orwell was wounded, shot through the throat.
17:14It would affect his speech for the rest of his life.
17:21He was sent to Barcelona to recover.
17:23But once there, Orwell was dismayed to find the solidarity of the leftists
17:28had splintered into factional fighting.
17:32The Stalinists were soon rounding up the militia
17:35and arresting their leaders.
17:37George Orwell and his wife fled north.
17:40It was a close escape.
17:47By the spring of 1939,
17:49the fascists had won.
17:51It was a devastating defeat for the left,
17:54and Orwell was convinced that Stalin's divisive campaign of deceit and terror
17:58was responsible for the victory of the fascist General Franco.
18:08In the autumn of 1940, the Battle of Britain began.
18:12Hitler ordered the bombing of civilian population centers.
18:17In spite of daily air raids,
18:19Orwell took a few months to write a book.
18:22A kind of children's fable
18:24that reflected on his experience with the communists in Spain.
18:28It was his first major breakthrough book.
18:31Animal Farm begins with the idealistic farm animals
18:35rebelling and driving the human owner out of the place.
18:39At first, they enjoy their freedom and equality.
18:42But gradually, they realize that some animals
18:45have become more equal than others.
18:51All the characters from the Russian Communist Revolution,
18:54disguised as various animals, make an appearance.
18:59A pig called Napoleon, the most vicious pig of all,
19:02is, of course, Stalin.
19:05I think Animal Farm, in Orwell's intention, certainly,
19:09is a lament for the revolution betrayed.
19:14Animal Farm is very different in tone from 1984.
19:18One reason might be that Orwell's wife, Eileen,
19:21had a big impact on the writing,
19:23with her comments and her contributions.
19:26It's a much more accessible book than 1984,
19:30and it's nothing like so despairing.
19:39The vision of a dark, forbidding world of the future in 1984
19:43may be connected to the tragic turn of events
19:45that occurred in Orwell's life.
19:47In 1945, just as Animal Farm was about to be published,
19:51just as the dark war years were ending,
19:53and he had adopted a son in anticipation of a brighter future,
19:57his wife, Eileen, died during routine surgery.
20:02It was completely unexpected.
20:05Less than a year after her death,
20:07Orwell made his decision to leave London with his two-year-old son
20:11and move to the island of Jura.
20:14He immediately began work on 1984.
20:21This was his last book. He was dying when he wrote it.
20:24And I think the combination of despair about Europe,
20:27despair about the past,
20:29despair about Europe, despair about the political future,
20:32and despair about his own survival
20:34do make this one of the most terrifying books one has ever read.
20:42Steamer! Dead over it! Get down! Get down!
20:511984 has been made into a film three times.
21:00In the most recent version, John Hurt is Winston Smith.
21:14During the day, his job involves destroying the past,
21:17but at night, he trawls through London,
21:20desperate to find the truth about the past.
21:30Can I help you?
21:34What's this?
21:37Oh, it's a beautiful thing.
21:40It's over 100 years old.
21:45Cost you $4.
21:51Oranges and lemons
21:53say the bells of St. Clemens.
21:56What was that?
21:59Something old.
22:01Orwell idealised what was simple and pure.
22:09On Drury, Orwell noticed the birds.
22:12He noticed every little flower and bird.
22:15And maybe there was some little thing of hope
22:19in the very bleakness of the landscape that spoke to him.
22:22I think if you're in a very bleak place
22:25and the first primrose comes, or the first swallow flies in,
22:29it means so much to you.
22:4840 to 50 H-group, prepare for your morning workout.
22:53All right, comrades, not sharp now.
22:56Follow me. One and two.
22:59And one and two.
23:01And one and two.
23:03Smith. 6079 Smith W.
23:06Yes, you.
23:08Bend lower, please.
23:10You can do better than that. You're not trying.
23:14Lower, please.
23:17That's better, comrade.
23:20There was never anything as sophisticated as two-way telescreens
23:24in Communist bloc countries during the Cold War.
23:27Sometimes boomerang on the East German troops.
23:30But there were hidden microphones and wiretaps everywhere.
23:34There have been many reports of shootings.
23:36It was an all-consuming paranoia,
23:39and it was something Orwell saw coming.
23:42I'm 39 and I've had four children. Now look.
23:45One and two.
23:47Winston rarely talks to women.
23:50His only relationship seems to be with the shrill,
23:53authoritarian instructor on the telescreen.
23:56Remember our fighting men.
23:58Then something totally unexpected happens.
24:02Winston has noticed that Julia, the girl from the fiction department,
24:06has been sneaking glances at him.
24:09He assumes that she is with the thought police.
24:15She stages a clumsy fall and manages to slip him a note.
24:19It's the start of a clandestine and dangerous love affair.
24:40The First Secret Encounter
24:45The first secret encounter between Winston and Julia in 1984
24:49is in the countryside.
24:51It's the only place where there are a few gaps in the web
24:54of the ever watchful telescreens.
24:57Winston discovers that Julia has slept with many men.
25:01It excites him.
25:03Listen, the more men you've had, the more I love you.
25:06I hate purity. I hate goodness.
25:08I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere.
25:10I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.
25:15Well, then I ought to suit you, dear.
25:17I'm corrupt to the bones.
25:21Good news for all the young women in the anti-sex leagues.
25:24Big Brother wants to reward you for your efforts
25:27to abolish illicit sex in every nook and cranny of Oceania.
25:31The lovers rent a cheap room above the porn shop.
25:34Even though it seemed odd that there was no telescreen,
25:37they continued their rebellion, for that is what it was.
25:40To be caught would lead to torture or death,
25:43or perhaps something worse.
25:48The most powerful form of science fiction
25:51is not a novel or a movie or a story
25:54that accurately predicts a future.
25:57It's a story that prevents a future.
26:00One of the most powerful self-preventing prophecies
26:03of all time was George Orwell's 1984,
26:08which conveyed an image that was so horrifying
26:15that millions of people said to themselves,
26:20I am going to devote a certain fraction of my effort
26:23for the rest of my life to making sure that this won't happen.
26:27Now, that's powerful. That's powerful literature.
26:33When 1984, the actual year, came round,
26:36not only television, but the whole world
26:39had changed in ways Orwell could not have imagined.
26:44Mikhail Gorbachev was about to become Premier in the Soviet Union,
26:48which would lead to the smashing of walls
26:50and the downfall of communism.
26:531984 was also the year that a little-known
26:56Pentagon computer network was reorganised
26:59to create a separate civilian university network.
27:03It would soon become known as the Internet.
27:12I think re-reading the history of the Soviet Union
27:15and the history of the Soviet Union
27:18I think re-reading 1984 in 1999 or 2000,
27:22you realise how much of it still speaks to us.
27:25There were people who tried to argue
27:27that certain things had passed away forever with the Berlin Wall,
27:30but there are other aspects of Orwell's nightmare
27:33that are with us every day.
27:37The loss of privacy was a central theme in 1984,
27:41a theme that has become a reality today.
27:45The Internet
27:58There's a sense of a loss of privacy
28:00in that you now behave differently
28:02because you believe you're being monitored,
28:04even if nobody's ever looking at the screen.
28:07I think that's what's happening in our society,
28:09that changes your sense of freedom.
28:11Orwell valued privacy.
28:13He moved to the end of the earth to keep it.
28:16Even today, 50 years later,
28:18telephone salespeople can't bother his old house.
28:21There's no telephone.
28:27Hello, is this Evelyn Johansson?
28:29Hello. We're raising money for the Green County Patrolmen's Benevolence Association.
28:33This is Cascard. Hello, this is Jim.
28:35Would you be interested?
28:38In the United States,
28:40one of the most irritating invasions of privacy
28:43is the nightly phone calls from the telephone salespeople.
28:49Hello?
28:50Hello there, may I speak to Kelly Martin?
28:52Manska's calling.
28:53Hi, Kelly, I'm Monique with Flimflex Diet Supplements.
28:56How are you today?
28:59For each and every citizen in the United States,
29:02there is an average of 30 people
29:04For each and every citizen in the United States,
29:06there is an average of 300 files or more
29:09containing reams of private data.
29:11I hear your baby there, Kelly.
29:13Is it a boy or a girl?
29:15Telemarketers, as they are known,
29:17always want more.
29:20Reference the file and wait for the DTU-216.
29:23Reference the BDR and Martin slash Kelly.
29:25She terminated at 3.06.
29:27Cancel. Stop. Unproceed construction-wise.
29:30Orwell's warning may be coming true.
29:32Completed 72 UTCs with a return estimate of 76% on GPS.
29:38The loss of privacy.
29:39Strangers reading your files,
29:41reading your images,
29:43reading your mind.
29:45Report any strangers.
29:47Remember, Big Brother is watching you.
29:50You should be watching them.
29:52Supposedly for your benefit, of course.
29:54We were wondering if you've heard of our Flimflex Daily Duo?
29:57No, thank you. Bye.
29:59The line often repeated
30:01is that we must give up a little bit of freedom
30:04for the convenience and protection.
30:06But the freedom we give up is real and known.
30:09Unknown is the true nature of the protection we receive in return.
30:17My grandparents were killed
30:19because of the gathering of information in Europe.
30:23And as a Jew especially,
30:25I worry about myself and minorities
30:28and what can be done if somebody comes into power
30:30and takes all that information and uses it.
30:32So it may be somewhat innocuous now,
30:34but the enormous power of now knowing
30:36everyone's race, religion,
30:38which videos they watch
30:40and how many groceries they buy
30:42by just tracking their credit cards
30:43and where they've been on vacation
30:45is terrifying if it falls into the wrong hands.
30:49Winston and Julia had been living a fantasy.
30:55We are the dead.
30:56We are the dead.
30:58You are the dead.
31:00Remain exactly where you are.
31:02Make no move until you are ordered.
31:06Big Brother was watching.
31:10Now they can see us.
31:11Now we can see you.
31:13Clasp your hands behind your heads.
31:17Stand out in the middle of the room.
31:19Stand back to back.
31:21Do not touch one another.
31:28Stand back.
31:48More than 21 million surveillance cameras
31:51have been sold and installed worldwide.
31:54And that's a modest estimate.
31:58A vast silent system of surveillance and control.
32:04They are powered up right now,
32:06watching for you.
32:11At the moment,
32:12even with millions of security cameras,
32:14our lives remain mostly private by default.
32:20Maintained because we are hiding in plain sight,
32:23surveillance of our intimate details
32:25requires too much effort.
32:27For the moment.
32:32Enemy of the people, Conrad Rosenblum,
32:34was executed for participating in a plot
32:36to assassinate Big Brother and several cabinet members.
32:39And that is the obvious flaw
32:41in Orwell's concept of the two-way telescreen.
32:45Who would watch the watchers?
32:47And who would watch them watching?
32:53In 1984, people watched people.
32:56That is all changing.
32:58Computers are already able to recognize faces
33:01in a primitive way.
33:03A personal computer has the equivalent brain power
33:06of, at best, a mouse.
33:08But the silicon circuits become brighter and brainier
33:11by the day.
33:14By 2020,
33:15a thousand dollars of computation will be equal
33:18to the computational capacity of the human brain,
33:21which I estimated about a hundred billion neurons.
33:24By 2030, a dollar of computation
33:26will equal the computing capacity of the human brain.
33:29Now, that's a necessary but not sufficient condition
33:32to create computers or non-biological intelligence
33:36equal to human intelligence.
33:38Please remain in your vehicle.
33:40Exit to the right.
33:42Who will be watching the watchers
33:44watching the watchers watch us?
33:46Exit to the right at all times.
33:48Quite possibly, non-biological intelligence.
33:51Look left.
33:53Clear the lane immediately.
33:56Presumably, a biological mind, human,
33:59will remain in control of the central processing.
34:03Presumably.
34:06But is that good news?
34:08I think what Orwell made us aware of
34:10is how easy it was, it is,
34:12to transform a whole culture, a whole nation.
34:15You can take good people, the best, the brightest,
34:18the people with the best values,
34:20the most normal, the most healthy,
34:22and transform them into fascists,
34:26into totalitarian-minded individuals,
34:29or mindless individuals,
34:31into Orwellian clogs of the state.
34:37In 1971, at Stanford University,
34:40Philip Zimbardo learned just how quickly
34:43human values can shift
34:45during an experiment he had organized
34:47in the Department of Psychology.
34:52College students, recruited through newspaper ads,
34:55were divided up at random
34:57into groups of prisoners and guards.
35:00The experiment called for those designated prisoners
35:04to actually be rounded up and jailed.
35:07Zimbardo was shocked
35:09when the experiment turned truly Orwellian.
35:13Help me out! Help me out now!
35:15You aspire to a life, do you?
35:17You get down here and do 10 push-ups.
35:20Two, three, four, five...
35:22Within two days, they were hitting them with the clubs,
35:25they were cursing them, they were physically abusing them.
35:28The boys, college students who were playing the role of guards,
35:31had become prison guards.
35:33They were telling me, these guys are dangerous,
35:35they have to be kept in chains,
35:37they have to be put in solitary confinement all night.
35:40I mean, just total loss of reality,
35:42in the most Orwellian sense.
35:46The study was supposed to run for two weeks.
35:48It ended in six days because it was totally out of control.
35:51Smoking is a privilege.
35:53Smoking is a privilege.
35:55The guards in Zimbardo's experiment
35:57had become infatuated with power.
35:59Now, there's a couple of ways that we can do this.
36:02Orwell was deeply concerned about this flaw in human nature.
36:06It was his central theme in 1984.
36:10After their arrest,
36:12Winston and Julia are sent to the torture chambers
36:15to be re-educated.
36:18The party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
36:23We are not interested in the good of others,
36:26we are interested solely in power.
36:30Not wealth, or love.
36:33We are interested in power.
36:37Not wealth, or luxury,
36:40or long life, or happiness.
36:42Only power.
36:44Pure power.
36:48What pure power means,
36:51you will understand presently.
37:01Julia submits immediately to the torturer's demands,
37:04but Winston holds out.
37:07In the torture chambers of the Ministry of Love,
37:10they do not seek the truth,
37:12they seek converts.
37:14To cure you.
37:16Would you understand, Winston,
37:20that no one whom we bring to this place
37:25ever leaves our hands
37:30uncured.
37:34Do you understand what I mean by that?
37:41Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
37:47No.
37:49I don't know.
37:51I don't know.
37:55Julia!
37:57Get up.
37:59The final chapters in 1984
38:01have become a permanent part of our cultural memory.
38:05Stand up straighter.
38:07In the movie, Richard Burton,
38:09in his last screen role before he died,
38:12played O'Brien, the inner party chief.
38:15Tell me, Winston,
38:17and remember, no lies,
38:20what are your true feelings towards Big Brother?
38:25I hate him.
38:27You must love him.
38:29It's not enough to obey him.
38:32You must love him.
38:36Room 101.
38:41He orders Winston to the subterranean room 101
38:44in the Ministry of Love,
38:46where individual tortures are custom-made
38:48to present each victim with his greatest fear.
38:54For Winston, it was rats.
38:57I press the first lever,
38:59and the rats move into the front compartment.
39:02I press the second,
39:04and the door of the cage will slide up.
39:07What do you... What do you want?
39:10Do you want...
39:14Help me!
39:16As the starved rats move closer to Winston's face,
39:20he begins to hallucinate that Julia is just beyond the cage.
39:24I love him.
39:27Do it to her! Do it to Julia!
39:30He holds his love for her,
39:32guarded in the deepest recess of his heart.
39:35But even those feelings he will eventually betray.
39:39Do it to Julia!
39:41Do it to Julia!
39:48Beastly.
39:50According to his mother,
39:52Orwell's first word was beastly,
39:55which is unusual language for a two-year-old.
39:59Towards the end of his life,
40:01Orwell became increasingly concerned
40:03that the English language was being treated in a beastly manner.
40:11In the book, some of Orwell's blackest humour
40:14is aimed at what he thought to be the debasement of language,
40:18from mindless clichés and deceptive euphemisms
40:22to acronyms that dehumanise and intimidate.
40:38Every year, fewer and fewer words,
40:42and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.
40:47The whole climate of thought will be different.
40:50In fact, there will be no thought as we understand it now.
40:56Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think.
41:01Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
41:07Orwell's disgust with the decline of language and literature
41:11was a constant theme in 1984.
41:16In the Ministry of Truth,
41:18technical authoring machines
41:20automatically churned out cheap pornographic fiction.
41:28A machine intelligent enough to write
41:31would have seemed a remote science fiction fantasy in 1949,
41:35but Orwell was on the right track.
41:37It doesn't matter.
41:39Feeding egos ain't no claim on our souls.
41:42Digital machines don't write pornography yet.
41:45However, there is a software program
41:48that will generate random poetry of sorts.
41:51Tap the haiku button and it mimics the Japanese style.
41:55The software was written by Ray Kurzweil.
42:03And every day, such programs become more powerful.
42:07In Orwell's time, the powers that be
42:10operated from deep inside faceless buildings,
42:13but at least they were human.
42:19...times faster than nerves inside our brains.
42:22However, human intelligence is much deeper, richer,
42:25people dealing with far greater subtlety than machines today.
42:28So once a computer can achieve
42:30the depth and subtlety and richness of human intelligence
42:33and combine it with these natural advantages
42:36of sharing knowledge, speed and accuracy,
42:39it's going to be a very formidable combination.
42:42And formidable competition as well
42:45for our children and our grandchildren.
42:47A truly Orwellian future, if ever there was.
42:52If we just look at a situation
42:54where it's intelligent machines and humans,
42:57then I can't see humans sort of standing up to that.
43:01It would mean that maybe by the end of this century,
43:04intelligent machines are running the show
43:07and humans are slaves or human farms and human zoos.
43:11Nothing more.
43:16Toy robots, built by computer students.
43:19The sort of toys we often see when the subject is robots.
43:23In the future, they won't be toys.
43:25They might be us, the result of miniaturisation.
43:29Entire computer chips as small as diamond dust
43:32circulating in our bloodstream.
43:34Professor Warwick has taken a step in that direction.
43:37He has had a chip implanted in his arm.
43:40It is one of the first primitive direct connections
43:44between a nervous system and a machine.
43:52Later, his wife Irena will have a chip slipped under her skin.
43:56As the technology evolves,
43:58the implants could lead to a direct connection brain to brain.
44:03So it's looking at the electronic signals
44:06that are our thoughts being transferred between people.
44:10A bit like telepathy, but for real, technically.
44:14Or will the brain not be able to cope?
44:17We simply don't know.
44:19We simply may not want to know.
44:25The idea of humans hardwired into a vast network
44:29fits the sort of bleak future
44:31that Orwell seemed particularly concerned about
44:34in 1984.
44:37Perhaps Orwell was right in a roundabout way
44:40and that's what we will end up with.
44:42The humans that are connected
44:44won't just be connected human to one intelligent machine
44:49as a standalone,
44:50will be a human connected into a network.
44:53They will be able to harness the power of that network,
44:57but the network will be able to control, perhaps,
45:01the power of the human.
45:03Big brother of a human nature
45:05is now big brother of an internet nature.
45:14After the final terror in Room 101,
45:17Winston Smith is released.
45:20He has been hollowed out.
45:23He gazed up at the enormous face.
45:27Oh, cruel, needless misunderstanding.
45:31But it was all right.
45:32Everything was all right.
45:34The struggle was finished.
45:36He had won the victory over himself.
45:40He loved big brother.