I finally got a fucking "A" on one of my essays. Eat THAT, Teresa.

George Ha
Per 4 Rice

“Vision of the Future”

As 1984 came and went, Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. Despite horrible tragedies, at least the bleak and Big Brother controlled future that Orwell predicted had not come to pass. However, as author Neil Postman presents, the world that Huxley created in Brave New World is almost one in the same as the modern world – even more so now than in 1985 when “Vision of the Future” was written. The rise of technology and the demand for high-entertainment media corrupted the world’s economy over time, creating a world with lazy teenagers, parents, adolescents, and an older generation parked in front of their televisions, movie screens, CD players, and computers, eliminating the high demand for books present only half a century ago. “Vision of the Future” compares and contrasts both Orwell and Huxley’s thoughts on the modern world and decides that although Orwell’s depressing prophecy of the future did not become reality, we must still fear the world Huxley presented – a world loving sloth, ignorance, and corruption.
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.” Although several books were banned in the mid 20th century such as Fahrenheit 451, which presents a similar world between Huxley and Orwell’s, the main threat here was the public’s disinterest in reading. With the growth of digital entertainment, people’s interest in books faded, as nobody wanted to take a few hours out of their day to read what could be presented to them on a screen in a matter of minutes. However the irony of sitting in front of a television for hours or even days has not yet hit Americans. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury predicts a world run by commercialism – entire rooms becoming television screens through the use of four-wall projectors and the horror of two hundred foot long billboards.
“As he (Huxley) saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” It has been unknown as to what people think about when watching television rather than reading, but perhaps it is little or anything at all. The use of calculators to solve math problems in school, the spelling and grammatical checkers used on essays, and the ability to communicate worldwide without any form of writing have all limited thought process.
“Huxley feared those who would give us so much (truth) that we would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” Since 1985, this became even truer with the internet. Millions of web pages advertising the many different “truths” flood computer screens every second, creating a human apathy towards what some consider “truth”. There are also those that present the truth in an irrelevant fashion. For example, America has used the attack on September 11th as an excuse to go to war with Iraq, a country completely irrelevant to these terrorist attacks. Soon the war became more focused on finding “weapons of mass destruction”. As soon as that idea was proven false, American leaders then chose another irrelevant idea for war. After a tidal wave of “truth”, the American people have gone back to their television programs and their computers in search of some other news and entertainment.
The world of media has destroyed our thinking capabilities. Instead of reading and expanding our knowledge, we have been reduced to staring at a glass screen for hours at a time. We have “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”, and have created a society based on sloth and ignorance. “Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us,” and indeed it has. Our love of celebrities and non-thought provoking news has limited our thought and has created a society dominated by the use of machines.