Big Business Big Brother

Some similarities I saw between the movie and 1984 were scary. It sounds as though we are becomming a survelience society just like in the book 1984. Monitoring our search engines and how far or where we travel. It sounds a little too close to 1984 for comfort.

I think that the internet searches being kept was a little too extreme. I understand that in the case where a man had his wife murdered it came in handy, but I can just see it turning into a big brother thing; how far will it go. I think that there has to be another way to prove someone guilty instead of watching what a person looks up. Also, the rental cars tracking devices seems insaine. I mean why monitor the cars when if something happens they get a brand new car and when loaned out the contract says nothing about being monitored. Isn't that a little bit invasive.

However, I think that if used correctly and not menicingly the Biometric Technologies and the face recognition technologies are amazing. They could seriously help in catching criminals, halting identity theft and possibly speeding up the airline securtity. At the same time having convinient uses like checking into work - that's what my work uses, and it's faster than having to fill out a time card.

Thin Gruel

I definately see a connection between Newspeak of 1984 aand our censorship. Newspeak deletes words to basically control the population's thoughts; they are scared of what the population will think of and rebellion. The Thin Gruel article says this about censorship, "Censorship occurs when school officials or publishers...delete words, ideas, and topics from textbooks and tests for reason other than fear of controversy." Both delete words out of fear. For example ever since the Holt incident no textbook publisher is willing to pay the price if something is found offensive, so they delete everything and seem to take it to the extreme. Newspeak also deletes everything that could cause harm; an example would be when they deleted spectacular and excellent, that was also to the extreme it seemed.

Textbooks are also going so far that they are deleting true stories and stories that are historically correct. In a fourth grade test question elimination Ravitch was able to sit in on she found many readings that were deleted which seemed, to her, correct. The Blind Mountain Climber I found the most disturbing, this was deleted because of "regional bias" and another bias about how having lack of sight was a disability. This was a true story of how a blind man hiked to the top of Mount McKinley. The committy said that this was "regional bias" because not all children have seen mountains so this is unfair. It seems now that "chldren should not be expected to read or comprehend stories set in unfamiliar terrain." Now, I might be wrong but I always thought that children had the best imaginations, so why is this being taken out?

Also in the Thin Gruel article the aim of the political right is to restore an idealized vision of the past; they believe that what a children reads a children with believe is the truth. This is also what Newspeak does, it controls thoughts with limiting vocabulary so only good thoughts can be expressed.