It's 25 years later; why does Nineteen Eighty-Four matter?

Orwell wrote his novel as a warning against the dangers both of totalitarianism and of the widespread use of propaganda. The now-past timespan of the novel (roughly April-October 1984) does not limit the power of these warnings. His decision to set the novel in the 1980s was a considered one, because he wanted to convey the idea to the mid-20th-century reader that the dystopia he was describing was not some distant futurist nightmare, but could feasibly come to exist within their lifetime, if the growth of totalitarian regimes in the world, fuelled by ever more cunning and widespread use of political propaganda, was allowed to continue unchecked.

It is arguable that some of Orwell’s predictions have come to pass in our time. Camera and other surveillance is now a fact of life in many public places the world over, with the citizens of the United Kingdom being the most watched people on the planet. On an ordinary day walking and commuting around London, Orwell’s “Airstrip One”, your image may easily be captured on more than 300 security cameras operated by various authorities. In recent years there have been other official erosions of the individual’s right to privacy and other civil liberties, supposedly justified by a perceived increase in threats represented by terrorism and organised crime. Some feel that, in the Western world (whose territories roughly coincide with those Orwell described as being part of Oceania), we are deliberately kept disconnected from world events and decision-making processes using the distraction of a steady flow of “reality” television (which is, of course, no such thing), an obsession with rampant consumerism born of endless advertising, celebrity gossip, and a world view which is increasingly shaped by a mass media controlled by a narrower, smaller and more homogenous collective of media interests every decade.