from Hacker News

The real-life plan to use novels to predict the next war

by tomek_zemla on 6/26/21, 1:12 PM with 3 comments

• by jhbadger on 6/26/21, 8:47 PM

  >And, naturally, there is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a one-party state uses 'telescreens to identify people from their expressions and heart rate – written more than half a century before the NSA’s Prism surveillance programme and China using facial recognition software to track its citizens.

  I think this is exaggerating what Orwell had predicted. His telescreens weren't automated detectors but simply two way video like Zoom calls. The only time in the book where surveillance by screen is shown is where Winston is doing exercises and the gym leader criticizes him for not trying hard enough, presumably because she could see him.

• by detritus on 6/26/21, 4:31 PM

  Brings to mind Stanislaw Lem's concept of Linguistic Futurology in The Futurological Congress.

• by guilhas on 6/27/21, 12:26 AM

  Oh boy can't wait, when is the next one?