The Role Of Technology In George Orwell's Novel '1984'

Artificial intelligence is rapidly growing in popularity. Conversely, will it reach a point where technology goes too far? As the development of artificial intelligence progresses, scientists are beginning to ponder as to whether the further creation of A.I. serves to mankind's benefit, or destruction. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the author depicts a fictional dystopia that demonstrates how easily artificial technology can rule a society. Modern science as well as literature supports theories about technology compromising a community. By looking at the ideals of scientist Stephen Hawking and author George Orwell in his novel 1984, a postulate can be made about technology changing mankind by controlling the way humans interact, independently
The addition of autonomous robots to society eliminates the possibility of any human interaction between mankind and its society by driving smarter, faster, and more intelligent robots to interact for us. In Orwell’s novel 1984, Big Brother is the driving force that runs the outer party. The fictional Big Brother is “always watching,” which creates a lack of privacy in the town. Those who stray from the ideals of Big Brother are sentenced to punishment for treason. The Big Brother takes away the human right of decision making by limiting the population into following his beliefs. Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking share similar concerns for the use of autonomous lethal weapons; a scenario almost identical to the one depicted in Orwell’s novel. The Big Brother’s ability to eliminate victims of treason poses a large threat to human existence in the outer party. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak stated “If we build [Artificial Intelligence] to take care of everything for us, eventually they'll think faster than us and they'll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently… Humans will be the robot’s pets (Rich).” Orwell illustrates this by having the