SAGE Open | |
A Shepherd for the Naïve: Images of Future Government in Huxley, Bradbury, and Forster | |
Christopher L. Atkinson1  | |
关键词: literature; culture; technology; communication technologies; mass communication; media; society; public administration; public policy; political science; political communication; politics; social sciences; | |
DOI : 10.1177/2158244015603107 | |
学科分类:社会科学、人文和艺术(综合) | |
来源: Sage Journals | |
【 摘 要 】
Intellectuals of the 20th century bore witness to societyâs injustices. They viewed and commented on erosion of rights and humankindâs callousness to itself. For example, Huxleyâs Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited illustrate with contempt a society that had renounced personal individuality and rejected freedom, choosing a drugged totalitarian state set adrift from any sense of morality. Huxleyâs work is a familiar touchstone, in that it presupposed a world that seems increasingly real to us, even though a faithful portrayal of the future was hardly Huxleyâs intent. Bradburyâs Fahrenheit 451 soberly reminded the world of the wages of intolerance to divergent ideas, in envisioning a government solidifying its hold on power by banishing the spectrum of human emotion in literature and mass media. Forsterâs ambitious short story âThe Machine Stopsâ countered the naiveté of a positive equal utopia, with a world cruel in its homogenization and dependent on a deified machine for all facets of its existence. In each instance, government is an ominous, questionable character. Technology, in these texts and in todayâs world, is a foundational element with muddled aimsâa rich virtual society on one hand, but frightening levels of assimilation, control, and loss of interpersonal communication and privacy in the crumbling arena of the real on the other. In this article, a future technology-led existence is examined through the lenses of these fictional works.
【 授权许可】
CC BY
【 预 览 】
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