Re: Black Mirror
My wife and I watched the first episode of Black Mirror and found it pompous, overblown, self-indulgent, and generally annoying.
Some episodes are better than others, and each episode feels (to me anyway) more like a self-contained movie than an episode of a series. I'd personally recommend watching another episode or two before you write it off completely.
In any case, for most middle-class industrialized-democracy citizens the present cultural moment is much more akin to Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four
Absolutely. What's truly terrifying is how few people realize that. Though I will point out that more and more political rallies - in all camps - seem to bear a resemblance to 2 minutes of hate from Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Orwell hated it when people wrote the title in numerals. He felt that emphasized what was a completely arbitrary date, rather than the themes he felt were important.
I vaguely remember seeing him quoted as saying his only regret about the book was the title and that he felt he'd gotten the rest of it basically right.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
