Science-Fiction, Techno-scientific Innovations and Political Power in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

Abstract

This article is a reflection on Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the famous novels by George Orwell, a British writer and journalist. It shows through a techno-critical analysis that, although the novel is science-fiction in that it is part of a dystopian approach to the literary genre, it also inspires and expresses current techno-scientific innovations through the emblematic figure of Big Brother. Moreover, just as Big Brother is the only symbol of the INGSOC, a single political party of which O'Brien is the leader, techno-scientific innovations are more or less embodied by political powers which, if they use them to control people's lives and subject them to their ideologies, can become totalitarian and despotic, even if they were previously democratic. In this logic, they deprive people of their freedoms, especially their freedom of thought and expression.