Re: Yeah, right
Thing is, most people haven't read 1984 and Animal Farm, which might have something to do with their acceptance of "the Surveillance State".
To be fair, Animal Farm has little to say about surveillance.
One problem with Nineteen Eighty-Four1 as an object lesson is that it depicts a totalitarian police state. That makes it apropos for, say, North Korea or the former East Germany; but the most successful contemporary surveillance states are the liberal-capitalist ones, which prefer the carrot2 to the stick.
For those societies something like Brave New World rings closer to home, though frankly it shows its age. I can't think offhand of a really ideal text for this purpose.
1Orwell hated the title being set in digits. He didn't like the title at all - it was forced on him by the publisher - but he particularly didn't like the semiliterate rendering of it as numerals.
2And more generally the subjective operations of power, such as interpellation, the management of desire, foreclosure, &c.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
