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Chris -- 2025-05-10
I’m tempted to put this in “Contribute” but caution shall be my watchword:
Winston Smith, protagonist of Nineteen Eighteen-Four,
His death in 1950 not long after the publication of Nineteen Eighteen-Four froze Orwell’s political development in the coldest days of the Cold War
For example, i’ve never read nineteen eighteen four, but have spoken to loads of people that have
Huxley’s Brave New World is much better. Apparently, Nineteen-Eighteen-Four was inspired it.
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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It may be a rinse-cycle error. Here are two upstream versions.
Editions of Ninety Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, published in 1945, circulated in the Soviet Union;
The Guardian Books
Read Nighty-Eighty four written by George Orwell
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@David – your first reference also contains this strange phrase “the dangers of overweening technology”. I cannot figure out how the technology [described in the the novel] could be described as “overweening”, which I understand to mean “overconfident” or “cocky”. I suspect some idea of over-use, over-arching, over-prevalent was intended.
Any thoughts
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will buy a ridiculous hat – Scott Adams (author of Dilbert)
Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day; set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life – Terry Pratchett
http://blog.meteorit.co.uk
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AdamVero wrote:
cannot figure out how the technology [described in the the novel] could be described as “overweening”, which I understand to mean “overconfident” or “cocky”. I suspect some idea of over-use, over-arching, over-prevalent was intended. Any thoughts
Overwhelming, rampantly triumphant?
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I suspect they might have intended “overwhelming” and got the wrong word.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will buy a ridiculous hat – Scott Adams (author of Dilbert)
Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day; set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life – Terry Pratchett
http://blog.meteorit.co.uk
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Interesting question, AdamVero. I understand the ambiguity in the use of that word in the article. In the context, I think I can see overweening technologies as a description of the potential dangers that come from too rapid, naïvely ambitious and therefore perhaps careless, development of social technologies, and our cocky eagerness to adopt them without deep consideration. They are seen in this light in hindsight, faced with the Snowden revelations. So it’s not a misuse there. It encompasses DT and your word associations in an interesting fashion.
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