When I read George Orwell’s book, 1984, in the eighties of the last century, it was a lovely and at the same time ghostly experience. At the time the book was forbidden and you were not allowed to possess it and also not read it. A large group of us met in an apartment, in which I had never been in my life and we took turns in reading it aloud. We drank tea and ate pickled gherkins, because there was nothing else. A group reading is something wonderful, because afterwards one can have a lively discussion. But the story of this book is frightening and it sent a shiver down my spine. The idea that I could live in a society which observes me at every step and knows everything about me and corrects me, if I do not feel as the state envisages, was simply awful.
After we had read the book, in the last century we agreed that in the near future this scenario is rather improbable, because the state does not have the technical resources to observe its citizens so closely. That was a feeling of relief, but the fundamental discomfort remained.Read More »
Michaela Merz 