3. While the ear 1984 has come and gone long ago, the disturbing yet strangely prophetic vision George Orwell presented in 1949 continues to be timelier with each passing decade. The novel 1984 remains the great classic of "negative utopia" which all subsequent dystopian novels were modeled on. As one of the first of its kind it in a time when many authors were focusing on the hopeful images of utopias, this view into how terribly wrong things can go for a society run by a government who not just alters peoples every behavior through reward very little of it and the threat of punishment but even alters their thoughts by changing the past through rewriting documents and thus history. The book is stunningly original and troubling novel that creates an imaginary world that is entirely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. No one The novels grasp of the imaginations of not just those who read it as it came out but entire subsequent generations cannot be denied nor can the force of its powerful warnings which seem to become more salient over time. Leland Thanks for your well considered response to the article. You are right in all you say things are so complicated now that never quite finish resolving one issue before another gets our attention. Plus with all the different factions in our society, many issues are emotionally laden becoming more of an emotional response that gets a bit our of hand overwhelming our ability to reason objectively and rationally. With the intricate technology that not just exists already, but the quick nature of developing newer, more complex systems that have more functions combined with the stealth nature that technology seems to be directed toward or have as some kind of function or possibly even a default and those of us who are not extremely tech savvy can get into a lot of trouble. Plus, it seems more and more that there are systems that can be made to just automatically operate in the background of our daily technology.