Orwell's book primary point wasn't about the surveillance (although there is plenty of surveillance there, to be sure), it was about how history is rewritten and people are trained to change their beliefs on command.

It's much more about "2+2=5" than about the Big Brother TV-show with the cameras. I myself thought the book was about surveillance before I read it, mostly because of the "Big Brother" TV show.

I generally avoid politics on HN, but:

“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” seems lifted straight out of 1984.

A few years ago I agreed with you. Now I’m not so sure.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-44959340/donald-...

The West is Brave New World on the surface with a 1984 surveillance state underneath. Obviously, not fully either one, but elements of both are present.

I'd suggest both novels demonstrate the same basic concern: technology in extending our our ability to carry out our desires will actually invigorate our base passions for agression and pleasure, destroying our humanity in the process. In 1984, true power is a boot on another persons neck, and even the last shred of resistance is destroyed in the protagonist, who in the last scenes sheds tears of repentant joy for big brother before he turns himself in for his rightful execution. In Brave New World, the desire for sensual pleasure has completely eroded all capacity to enjoy love, truth, and beauty. Likewise, Huxley's Savage finds the world unlivable and takes his own life at the end of the novel.

Read about Australia’s stance on encryption laws and the recent raids on media offices and see if you still think the same way.

Also see the five eyes network.

I've seen good arguments about both being more suitable to our time. Brave New World captured more of the 'entertainment as anaesthesia' technique, while 1984 captured more of the paranoia-as-virtue we're burdened with. However, we have some very large deviations from Huxley's vision. No one would dream of sending their children to be raised by the state. If a drug like Soma existed (yes there is a drug called Soma now, but I mean a substance that acts as the one in Huxleys book does) it would be aggressively and hatefully prohibited.

One of the most prescient things about 1984 that really stuck out to me at the time I read it, and which I think someone could VERY easily get away with actually creating today with few even batting an eye was the Youth Anti-Sex League. It only gets slight mention in the book, I believe Winston's neighbors children were teenaged members. Brave New World handled sexuality very differently, with its 'orgy porgys' and whatnot. That's certainly not the state we have today, where discussion of sex is fine so long as you're condemning anyone who is having or seeking it, especially if they're outside of their 20s or ugly, fat, disabled, etc.

Ultimately, both books are a product of their times and provide interesting insights nonetheless. I don't know what benefit there is in holding one up as 'more alike' the dystopia we've created.

I tend to agree. As much as I love 1984, I tend to agree with some of the points Huxley made in his letter to Orwell in 1949.

"Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World."

The letter is very interesting and worth a read.

https://cognitive-liberty.online/orwell-versus-huxley/

I believe that the range and depth of surveillance are pretty much equal in both the East and the West, and the difference is entirely in the respective societies' willingness to acknowledge that they're being surveilled.

There's an interesting comparison of the two works in cartoon form here: https://biblioklept.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/huxley-orwel...

...taken from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

I don't think Huxley's Brave New World has aged too well. Many of its central concepts such as 'soma', 'hatchery and conditioning centers', and the caste system - alphas to epsilons - don't have readily transposable equivalents in our modern day society. Granted, many of the technologies in 1984 don't either, but its central concepts resound to our times.

It seems very strange in the first paragraph to claim that 1984 has "outlasted in public awareness" three other books that are very much still in public awareness. Also, in terms of enduring effect, I'd wager that a lot more people have seen the film A Clockwork Orange than have read 1984.

And 1984 is incredibly well written while Brave New World is a very dull read. I've read 1984 two or three times and I think I skimmed the last 100 pages or so of Brave New World, something I rarely do with novels.

Huxley yes, but mostly his emphasis on pleasure over pain and self in order to pacify the population. But designer babies are already here so he could end up being correct on many more things.

Yes, here in the West we are too moral for mass state surveillance.

Huxley

Surveillance capitalism has changed that narrative imo. China is still more blatant but for how long?