21st Century censorship

we’ve come a long way since George Orwell wrote 1984 and it’s interesting how much our world reflects his once-improbable Big Brother visions, in spirit if not according to the letter of the novel

in many ways we’ve gone far beyond Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, but it’s scary how few people realize it and even scarier how few care

censorship, of course, is an ancient and time-worn strategy for authorities of all stripes; in today’s information age, managing Truth is easier than ever, and more anonymous thanks to hi-tech; unlike the citizens of most 20th Century dictatorships, we don't even realize it's happening

don't believe it? tried to find any concrete, real-world information about Al-Qaeda?

noticed how hard it was to access news about Yellowstone’s unprecedented quake swarm, if you ever heard about it in the first place?

what have you heard about the US-Russian dash toward conflict in South America?

the explanation is always that a website was “overloaded”, “crashed”, etc, because of the high number of people trying to access the info; They call it an Information Bottleneck; you could choose to believe that, or you might wonder if They left the phone receiver off the hook deliberately, to give everybody a busy signal instead of an answer

a recent Utne Reader article suggests authorities are realizing the Internet’s potential as a “flexible and effective mechanism for thought control”; Utne describes modern control of access to information as censorship by frustration

more next time

Blessed Be