Orwell's Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest, by Peter Huber
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Orwell's Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest, by Peter Huber
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Mark Zuckerberg's ‘A Year of Books’ SelectionGeorge Orwell’s bleak visions of the future, one in which citizens are monitored through telescreens by an insidious Big Brother, has haunted our imagination long after the publication of 1984. Orwell’s dystopian image of the telescreen as a repressive instrument of state power has profoundly affected our view of technology, posing a stark confrontational question: Who will be master, human or machine? Experience has shown, however, that Orwell’s vision of the future was profoundly and significantly wrong: The conjunction of the new communications technologies has not produced a master-slave relation between person and computer, but rather exciting possibilities for partnership. In an extraordinary demonstration of the emerging supermedium's potential to engender new forms of creativity, Huber’s book boldly reimagines 1984 from the computer's point of view. After first scanning all of Orwell’s writings into his personal computer, Huber used the machine to rewrite the book completely, for the most part using Orwell’s own language. Alternating fiction and non-fiction chapters, Huber advances Orwell’s plot to a surprising new conclusion while seamlessly interpolating his own explanations and arguments. The result is a fascinating utopian work which envisions a world at our fingertips of ever-increasing information, equal opportunity, and freedom of choice.
Orwell's Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest, by Peter Huber - Amazon Sales Rank: #174055 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-30
- Released on: 2015-06-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.00" w x 6.00" l, .94 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Orwell's Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest, by Peter Huber From Publishers Weekly In George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, the telescreen-which spies on its captive audience members and fills their minds with propaganda-is the instrument that makes possible the totalitarian state's absolute control. Huber (Galileo's Revenge) believes Orwell was fundamentally wrong in assuming that electronic media would facilitate mind control. On the contrary, he argues, today's telecommunications world-spanning cable television, personal computer networks, cellular phones and so forth-offers a multiplicity of choices in information and fosters the exchange of ideas. In alternating chapters, Huber splices a belabored critique of Orwell's prophecies with an experimental fiction, closely based on 1984, but with Eric Blair (i.e., Orwell under his real name) as the protagonist. The fictional chapters interpolate real-life figures such as spy Guy Burgess, Orwell's colleague at the BBC, and Vaughan Wilkes, Orwell's sadistic schoolmaster. Concluding with a handy capsule history of telecommunications, Huber provocatively predicts the convergence of computing, television and the telephone in a myriad of mixed-media networks. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal In his preface, Huber discusses the grim and compelling vision of Orwell's 1984. However, as Huber (Galileo's Revenge, LJ 8/91) points out, and as is evident by the passage of time, Orwell's vision of the future and of the uses of technology was fundamentally wrong. To explore the central themes of Orwell's work, as well as his essays and letters, Huber rewrites 1984; each chapter of this novel-within-a-book is followed by commentary on the major themes in 1984. Entitled "1994 and After," the work features the main character, Blair, who is modeled on Orwell (whose given name was Eric Blair). Blair's story roughly parallels Winston Smith's experiences in 1984. In the final section, Huber recapitulates the developments of the telecommunications and computer industries to demonstrate more precisely why Orwell's predictions were so off the mark. Recommended as a companion to the study of 1984.Cheryl L. Conway, Univ. of Arkansas Lib., FayettevilleCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews A curious, contentious, but always interesting sequel cum polemic that conjures up the ghost in Orwell's machine. Huber (Galileo's Revenge, 1991), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute for Policy Research, has two abiding convictions: that 1984 remains ``the most important book published since the war'' for its prescient recognition that the information and technology culture would pose the late 20th century's determining challenges for human culture; and that Orwell was nevertheless ``completely, irredeemably, outrageously wrong'' about the implications of the technology he so perspicaciously portrayed. Writing from a postCold War, postinformation superhighway perspective, Huber argues that the convergence of information and communication technologies Orwell foresaw in his ``telescreen,'' far from condemning society to the grim panoptic coercion of the Party, are by their nature driven toward the creation of markets in information and services that will inevitably elude the grasp of centralizing authority and ultimately topple it (adducing as evidence the Internet and the role of information technology in the collapse of the Soviet empire). He makes this case in a singular fashion, alternating passages of conventional literary and political critique with his own sequel cum rewrite of 1984--a patented computer-aided ``palimpsest'' assembled largely in Orwell's own words from shreds and patches of both the original novel and his other writings--in which the fearsome interrogator O'Brien, the Party, and the vast totalitarian superstates all perish not by self-conscious political activism or revolt, but simply through the innate logic of the technology they wrongly believed they could control. Many readers may question Huber's libertarian faith in market forces and in the inevitable Big Brotherdom of all social planning or collective endeavor; and matters aren't helped by a style whose affectations, when not simply reformatting Orwell, can border on the precious. But overstated and overlong as it may be, Huber's undertaking remains ambitious, strikingly original, and thoroughly provocative. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful. An excellent sequel to Orwell's "1984" By A Customer I have been fond of the negative utopias for some years -Orwell's "1984" being my favourite. You might imagine theexcitement I felt upon seeing a sequel! At first read of Huber's sequel I was, however, outraged! What gaul to plagerize Orwell as this book does ... until, as I read on, I was dumbfounded to realize that this is *exactly* what Orwell *would* have appreciated - the symetry, the self-reference, the genius of Huber to become his own Winston Smith and rewrite the story is perfect. Huber does, indeed, add his own original touches: by incorporating Orwell's other writings into the work, thus giving us insight into Orwell's evolution and psychology, and more cogently,by updating The Party and Oceania into today's world of political correctness, multiculturalism, the green movement and other frightening signs that Big Brother is alive and well. Huber, however, holds out the hope that the "telescreen" (i.e. the Internet) will be the very tool that undoes the power of Big Brother/Big Government/Intellectual Enslavement that masquerade as today's fashionable causes ( political correctness, eco-green-fascism, and multiculturalism) by providing true freedom of thought, expression and commerce - all anathema to centralized control. David Findley, Jan. 1997
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. No ad hominems here By planosue I would suggest first off, reading or re-reading Orwell's masterpiece before embarking on this book. I regret that I didn't have that insight earlier. I struggled for about the first half of Revenge to maintain interest. Then, somewhere about mid point the writing seemed to get a spark...don't know if that is attributable to the author getting a second wind ..or to me getting a first wind. In any event I finished the book with a much higher opinion of it than I started. Huber does a brilliant job of appreciating Orwell's original message ...while disputing much of it. His arguments are offered up with style and grace rather than an attempt to skewer Orwell. No ad hominems here. Such a refreshing approach in today's world of rampant hatefulness among those who disagree.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful. It offered me some useful and interesting perspectives that have clarified and added to ... By Robert I read this book in 2002. I have always been a fan of Orwell’s and Huber’s title alone was enough to pique my curiosity. It offered me some useful and interesting perspectives that have clarified and added to my own knowledge and thinking. Recently, in an internet forum, I read some comments by two people who related stories of individuals who had come from Eastern Europe and who had tried to obtain and read Orwell’s works, like “Animal Farm” and “1984”, often at great risk. The commenters were remarking on the poignancy of these stories, and how interesting it was that the internet and free flow of information had overturned the dictatorships that had oppressed people for so many years, and which had attempted to stifle the natural human curiosity and thinking. Reading their exchange of commentary, I remembered “Orwell’s Revenge” on my shelves and the irony represented by Orwell’s works that it had revealed to me. I can’t recommend this book anymore highly.Orwell was a genius who understood quite a lot about society and the human condition, but his fundamental philosophy was pessimistic. He was fundamentally afraid that "the boot stamping on a human face forever" was the scenario that was ultimately destined to win the contest of history. The exponents of the totalitarian dictatorships were likewise afraid that his words would awaken resistance and overturn their plans, and they suppressed his works, often brutally. Huber’s book points out that the bloody, dehumanizing, twentieth century dictatorships were not ultimately brought down by Orwell, but by something that Orwell himself had failed to understand. Essentially, it boils down to this: what oppressors and those who fear them both often do not understand is that freedom is not something that human beings deserve to have or not, rather, human beings ARE free, by nature. Liberty is ultimately not something that is granted or withheld; it is an essential characteristic of human existence that is either acknowledged or denied by our philosophies and social structures, and in the case where it is denied, the more energy that a society invests in the denial of human freedom the more likely it is that our inherent liberty will ultimately cause the failure and collapse of the structures supporting those societies. Contrary to Orwell, the telescreen was not the weapon of Lennin's and Stalin's triumph; it was their nemesis. Through an inventive deconstruction and reassembly of Orwell’s works, Huber tells an engaging story in George Orwell’s own words and writings that reframes the 1984 novel in a newer perspective. Huber engagingly informs us of how George Orwell and his contemporaries came to have the blind spot that left them troubled about the fate of mankind when they should have been more optimistic about the progress of the human condition.
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