Is Technology Good or Bad? Argumentative Essay Sample in the Example of 1984 by George Orwell

In the novel "1984," George Orwell talks about the rule by "The Party," a fictional totalitarian government that controls a dystopian London. The events in the novel take place in a near future where the world has been destroyed by a cataclysmic nuclear war. In the city surrounded by nuclear wasteland, The Party feels that it is its responsibility to preserve humankind by preventing another possible attack. To achieve this, the government monitors all the citizens through the use of technology. Every home is installed with a "telescreen," a small flat screen that has a camera and a hidden microphone so that the occupants are observed at all times. In the areas where the telescreen cannot see, the government installs hidden microphones. With the use of these devices, The Party captures and records every action and thought and analyzes the same for any anti-Party actions or tendencies. If any of such thoughts are expected from a member, he or she is arrested and "reeducated" accordingly (Awan Ghafoor and Raza 21).

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Discussion on the Technology Impact

The world depicted in "1984" is what everyone wants to avoid or at least think they want to avoid. In a world where not only the government but also your peers know everything you do at all the time, whether good or bad shows that there is a complete invasion of privacy of personal information. Unfortunately, this is the kind of world we are slowly slipping into, and the sad fact is, we are doing it in our free will. The only missing thing from making it a full reality from the novel is that there is no totalitarian government torturing us. Comparing the amount of personal information, the current generation is sharing with that of the previous generation of up to 1980, there is a huge difference. Notably, the introduction of the Internet into the daily lives of almost every person in the world contributed mainly for this difference. Not only has social networking gained a lot of popularity, but the portability of the technology devices has also improved over the years as the cost reduces nearly every day.

It is no doubt how the internet has connected people around the world. Before it was invented, connections were limited to the physical reach of telephone services, and the slow speed of the post. With the introduction of the Internet, sharing news and information has been revolutionized happening at rates that could only be imagined 40 years ago. As a result, there is rapid diffusion of ideas by people who could be as far as possible from each other. The Internet is arguably the greatest invention of the human race. With social networking, it is possible to connect with current friends in different places as well as keeping touch with the old ones. The basic idea of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Myspace, and Snapchat (to mention the current ones) is for you to have an online presence. To sign up for their accounts, one is required to provide personal information including name and date of birth making it easy for your friends to find and connect with you.

However, there is a dark side to this sharing of information, and no one seems to notice or even care. It is now much easier to share the personal information shared on these online platforms because, with a press of a button, all the information about a person could out there for the world to see. What is even worse is that, once the information is shared, there is nothing that the person can do about it. Again, what people do not know is that the privacy policies set by the companies permit them to use it to tailor their advertisements to what would be most likely to interest you based on the information you provided. It is unfortunate that very few people care to read through the privacy policies and the terms of use. If asked, the company can give the information to the government because there is no federal statutory or constitutional right preventing the government from doing so (Radesky et al. 2). Now, this is scary because it sounds like "The Party" in the novel where the government could access personal information of their citizens whenever they saw fit.

Conclusion

Gorge Orwell's novel may have been an exaggeration of the future, but one cannot deny the fact that the addictive nature of technology is slowly consuming our minds. The same technology meant to promote human interaction through connection is the one limiting real human interactions. Most people around the world especially the millennials are always staring at the screens of either their laptops or smartphones. Some cannot even notice things happening around them because they are so much absorbed into the world inside their social network accounts. If we want to avoid a world as predicted by Orwell, we need to take a step back and realize how much information we should be sharing with the world through the Internet. Achieving this would require the society to know how the information can be used against us so that we understand how to use these services to better ourselves by recognizing the amount of data to share and what to keep private.

Works Cited

Awan, Abdul Ghafoor, and Syed Ahmad Raza. "The Effects of Totalitarianism and Marxism towards Dystopian society in George Orwell's selected fictions." Global Journal of Management and Social Sciences 2.4 (2016): 21-37.

Orwell, George. Nineteen eighty-four. Everyman's Library, 2009.

Radesky, Jenny S., Jayna Schumacher, and Barry Zuckerman. "Mobile and interactive media use by young children: the good, the bad, and the unknown." Pediatrics135.1 (2015): 1-3.