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Most of us have heard famous phrase from the novel 1984 “Big Brother is watching you”. In this novel, Big Brother is the supreme dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state where “the Party” has total power over the people in its quest to perpetuate itself. In this society, everyone is under constant surveillance by the authorities, and people are reminded of this endlessly by the catch-phrase “Big Brother is watching you”.

Since 1984 was published, the term “Big Brother” has become synonymous with overly-controlling authorities, organizations and governments.

Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language, and a belief in democratic socialism.

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Interesting Art Project to celebrate 110th birthday of George Orwell (2013)

Last year, to celebrate what would’ve been George Orwell’s 110th birthday, two Dutch artists sought inspiration from his novel 1984. The artists took to the streets of the Dutch city of Utrecht to put party hats on CCTV cameras in an attempt to draw attention to the culture of surveillance in modern cities.

“On Tuesday the 25th of June, to celebrate the 110th birthday of George Orwell, surveillance cameras in the center of the city of Utrecht were decorated with colorful party hats!

George Orwell is best known for his book ‘1984’, in which he describes a dystopian future society where the populace is constantly watched by the surveillance state of Big Brother.

By putting these happy party hats on the surveillance cameras we don’t just celebrate Orwell’s birthday. By making these inconspicuous cameras that we ignore in our daily lives catch the eye again we also create awareness of how many cameras really watch us nowadays, and that the surveillance state described by Orwell is getting closer and closer to reality.”, write the artists on their website

Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell’s narrative is more timely that ever.

The novel is set in the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as “thoughtcrimes”. The tyranny is epitomized by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. Big Brother and the Party justify their oppressive rule in the name of a supposed greater good.

The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth, which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker, but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.

1984 presents a “negative utopia,” that is at once a startling and haunting vision of the world—so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of entire generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions—a legacy that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

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