Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True

298 Pages·2011·9.52 MB·English

by  Mark Dice

About the Author
As a child Mark Dice spent many Wisconsin winters in
his parents’ basement disassembling toys and electronics,
wondering how these seemingly magical devices worked.
His father was an engineer and had a wide variety of tools,
hardware, and mechanical devices that were at Mark’s
disposal to tinker with and build whatever he could imagine.
He would turn his old radio controlled cars into radio
controlled boats using scrap Styrofoam slabs from nearby
construction sites and tested them on a local pond. When
at the mall, instead of being interested in getting the latest
tennis shoes or designer t-shirts, Mark would spend time at
Radio Shack buying an odd array of switches, lights, and
other electrical components to build whatever device he
and his friends had dreamed up after watching films like
Short Circuit (1986) or an episode of MacGyver.
Before the Internet and personal computers became
as common as the telephone, Mark was fortunate enough
to convince his parents to buy him a computer in 1991,
which if you were born before 1980, perhaps you
remember that PC computers consisted of a black screen
displaying only a white C:/> which would respond with “bad
command or file name” unless you entered in an exact
command that few people knew how to do. This was called
the C prompt. So while his parents couldn’t get the
computer to do anything but say “bad command or file
name,” Mark and his friends had discovered bulletin board
systems (BBSes) and found themselves on the cutting
edge of the coming computer revolution. Before most
people had heard of the Internet or websites, Mark was
downloading videogames and software from the different
BBSes he found and developed a fascination with Bill
Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and at the time, the richest
man in the world.
With all the wonders and possibilities of advancing
computer hardware and software, Mark also saw a dark
side to the technology. He had a natural inclination that with
the power Bill Gates had, he or another individual or group
could cripple society, or one day create and implement the
very kinds of Orwellian systems Mark had seen in science
fiction movies growing up. Seeing the logical progression
of technology in the hands of power-hungry megalomaniacs
worried him. As the years went by, technology advanced at
a more rapid rate each year, and as a young adult Mark
began reading in mainstream publications that he was not
alone in fearing what unregulated technology could do to
our privacy, freedoms, and to mankind.
Mark Dice is the author of several books on the occult
and secret societies, including The Resistance Manifesto,
The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction, and The New World Order:
Facts & Fiction. His criticism of pop culture, media, and
politics has made news around the world. Mark has a
bachelor’s degree in communication and lives in San
Diego, California.

BIG BROTHER
Introduction
When George Orwell (pen name of Eric Blair) first
published his famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was
the year 1949, and it told a dark story of what he envisioned
life may be like in the future—in the year 1984. His book, as
well as his name, have become synonymous with privacy
concerns involving technology and also an all-powerful,
oppressive ruling elite that strictly governs the activities of
the population with an iron fist.
Orwell’s book is where we get the term Big Brother
from, such as when people say “Big Brother is watching
you.” When people say this, they’re referring to the
omniscient surveillance system described in the novel that
continuously watched and listened to people—even in their
own homes. When we call something Orwellian to describe
the invasiveness of certain technology or government
policies, we are also referring to George Orwell’s
nightmarish vision he described in his novel. There are
several other terms that Orwell himself coined in Nineteen
Eighty-Four, such as doublethink, thoughtcrime, and
memory hole, which have also become part of our
vernacular.
Even if you have not read the book or seen the film,
you are still undoubtedly familiar with the issues that make
up the storyline, such as the high-tech surveillance system
watching and listening to everyone in order to keep them in
line with the government (called the Party in the novel). You
are probably also familiar with the concept of a small elite
ruling class (what Orwell calls the Inner Party) living in luxury
and wielding unimaginable power over lower level citizens.
In the novel, people have lost their freedom, their critical
thinking skills, and even the ability to love due to the cultural
depths society has sunk to as a result of Big Brother’s
control. The reason Nineteen Eighty-Four remains so
popular, and the reason society has adopted vocabulary
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BIG BROTHER
from the book, is because it serves as more than merely a
fictional novel for the reader’s entertainment. The novel
served (and continues to serve) as a stark warning of what
the future may hold if we don’t resist invasive technology
and oppressive government policies, or if the population at
large becomes so lost in a world of pop culture, sports
entertainment, or our own selfish desires, that we simply
don’t care.
Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True
looks at technology that now exists or is under development
and will exist in the near future, that threatens to make our
world just as horrific or even worse than the world George
Orwell described. This book will provide information from
mainstream news sources, industry experts, and even
patent numbers of the most invasive and sinister Orwellian
devices anyone could dream of. We will also look at actual
government programs and policies that seem as if they
came right out of Orwell’s dark imagination, such as the
government secretly paying mainstream media reporters to
act as gate-keepers and propagandists for the
establishment, and the FBI illegally spying on and smearing
peaceful political activists who were seen as problematic.
This book is certainly not anti-technology. Technology
is a fantastic tool which can benefit those who use it, or
harm them, depending on the intentions of the person
designing it or using it. Technology has brought us amazing
inventions that would seem supernatural to civilizations that
lived just a few hundred years ago. Arthur C. Clarke, the
author of 2001 a Space Odyssey, was correct when he
said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.”
While this magical technology has brought us the
convenience of calling our friends or family on our cell
phones, allowing us to talk with them from virtually anywhere
in the world, and given us the ability to watch events on the
other side of the earth unfold live on television, and other
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