Technology In Brave New World

In the past tyranny has failed due to the inability to have complete control over its citizens and the governments overall instability. To obtain complete control there had to be a way keep track on each and every individual and make sure they weren’t straying away from the power’s grasp. In the dystopian novels 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley the two societies use technology and science to control and surveillance their citizens.

1984 centers on the life of a man named Winston Smith living in the country of Oceania. The country’s overall reason of using the technology and science is to create fear and intimidation among the people. Having telescreens, which operate as television and security cameras simultaneously,

From “birth” everything for the average citizen in the world state has already been planned for them. The World State has taken complete control over even the most natural and universal process: birth. Hatcheries have replaced parents putting the children in social ranks and using something called the Bokanovsky process to create 96 embryos from the originals egg. With their technology they have made it possible to create and condition humans obtaining complete control of them until their eventual demise. There conditioning doesn’t stop after birth but continues throughout their life with electrocuting babies and sleep teaching called hypnopaedia, “Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. There was a whisper under every pillow…” The world state began to use hypnopaedia as a way to begin teaching moral values at a young age so they could direct the citizens to what they want them to believe. The invention of soma which ironically means “sleep” in Latin takes the citizens on holidays whenever something goes wrong, “you look glum! What you need is a gram of soma.” (Huxley 60) As a part of their conditioning soma was what they were told to take whenever they felt unhappy because if they were to ever realize that they were unhappy the World State’s stability would soon collapse. The objective in this society is to make the citizens so happy

Although the two deprive the citizens from science and therefore the truth that’s it as far as the similarities go. In 1984, Oceania used fear and intimidation to brainwash the citizens and use constant surveillance as their main tool. Yet, in Brave New World happiness is what the world state tries to achieve because why would anyone want to change anything if their truly happy? They are so conditioned and blinded that they don’t even realize how truly unhappy they are. The use of technology is much more evident in Brave New World than it is in 1984. In this society basically every form of technology at hand: factories, soma, feelies, and helicopters are used to keep the citizens happy and out of the way. Oceania on the contrary only uses telescreens, tiny microphones, and helicopters to surveillance its citizens everything else is left in the hands of the psychological trauma