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Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

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Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#111

Post by globular-toast »

willis936 wrote: post #106
globular-toast wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was more that the female characters turn up in books two and three. Three in particular. If you like SF you can't go wrong reading all of Asimov IMO. The entire Robots/Empire/Foundation series is fantastic. It doesn't mean you can't also read other, "better" SF either. Asimov's main SF work will take a few months to read at most.

Are you referring to the literal planet rather than a woman? That character felt particularly of self insert fantasy (oo a hot 20 year old in love with the aged professor). Regardless, stopping at the first book is a good recommendation. Asimov demonstrated he didn't understand what made his own work interesting. Granted mystery boxes are hard, but he took an immediate about-face on psychohistory and retconned any bi…

I read books because I enjoy them. I enjoy reading about hot 20 year olds and big breasted women in space actually. Women are allowed to have 50 Shades, I'm allowed to enjoy books too.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#112

Post by willis936 »

globular-toast wrote: post #111
willis936 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to the literal planet rather than a woman? That character felt particularly of self insert fantasy (oo a hot 20 year old in love with the aged professor). Regardless, stopping at the first book is a good recommendation. Asimov demonstrated he didn't understand what made his own work interesting. Granted mystery boxes are hard, but he took an immediate about-face on psychohistory and retconned any bi…

I read books because I enjoy them. I enjoy reading about hot 20 year olds and big breasted women in space actually. Women are allowed to have 50 Shades , I'm allowed to enjoy books too.

You are. And I'm allowed to read into the author's psychology when they wear it on their shoulder. And I'm also allowed to critique the author when they misunderstand their work and write rambling, uninspired sequels that ruin the original work.

Lucas and Disney couldn't help but copy even these bad parts of Foundation in the Star Wars prequels and sequels.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#113

Post by TitaRusell »

fransje26 wrote: post #102
pavlov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And North Korea maintains a system of neighborhood surveillance, mandatory self-criticism sessions, and hereditary social classes which are perhaps closer to “1984” because they are so well established now. When it collapsed, East Germany was still led by the same people who had created it. The Berlin Wall only existed for 28 years. North Korea is a multi-generational prison.

No. East Germany did not start existing with the Berlin Wall. The system was in place well before that, and so was the Stasi. It spanned more than 40 years, and was absolutely multi-generational.

In hindsight East Germany took a lot of inspiration from Nazi Germany.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#114

Post by cornholio »

thombat wrote: post #81
fake-name wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need an AI. This is such a core misunderstanding that Asimov seems to have, and it kind of kills his entire analysis for me. The assumption is that only some small fraction of a fraction of the people who could be surveilled at any time are being surveilled. The crux of the thing is that everyone COULD be under surveillance at any time, so in effect everyone must behave as if they are being observed be…

Indeed, this is such a central point that it's made clear in the first chapter: The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being…

The review seems completely consumed by professional bitterness to the point where it becomes laughable. By the 1980s the methods of KGB, Stasi, Securitate etc. were well known in the west; how can he put this on paper and not realize he was being a complete fool:

> [the governmnet in 1984] has a system of volunteer spies in which children report on their parents, and neighbours on each other. This cannot possibly work well since eventually everyone reports everyone else and it all has to be abandoned.

In fact, the human powered system of total state surveillance worked remarkably well, it was one of the few things that did work in most communist countries - because it was paramount for state security and enormous resources were dedicated to it.

In every block of flats, every factory floor, every friend circle there was an informer who wrote down weekly reports about who is making political jokes, who is listening to Radio Free Europe, who is planning to flee abroad or has access to contraband meat and razor blades and so on. These informers were themselves controlled by blackmail and fear, were fanatical supporters or were simply doing the work in exchange for favors or goods. Any individual harboring intentions to overthrow the system was thus isolated, he knew that any such talk would quickly get him sidelined from his job, evicted from his flat, sometimes declared mentally unstable and committed, and finally, if nothing else worked, disappeared.

The entire review reads like a clumsy attempt to soil Orwell's legacy, that was already, by that time, shaping to be far more significant than Asimov's own.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#115

Post by globular-toast »

willis936 wrote: post #112
globular-toast wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read books because I enjoy them. I enjoy reading about hot 20 year olds and big breasted women in space actually. Women are allowed to have 50 Shades , I'm allowed to enjoy books too.

You are. And I'm allowed to read into the author's psychology when they wear it on their shoulder. And I'm also allowed to critique the author when they misunderstand their work and write rambling, uninspired sequels that ruin the original work. Lucas and Disney couldn't help but copy even these bad parts of Foundation in the Star Wars prequels and sequels.

> ruin the original work

I've never understood this. The beauty of recorded media is authors cannot ruin or revoke their work, assuming no actual censorship, of course (copyright can also be a problem). Just ignore the subsequent works if you don't like them. This is the first time I'm hearing about people only reading the first Foundation book but it's definitely worth doing some quick checks before dedicating one's finite time to reading/watching/listening to anything.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#116

Post by snayan »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #70
kikokikokiko wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These Minessota videos are classic examples of what Scott Adams used to call "two different movies being played on the same screen", in this case quite literally. From the point of view of a left leaning person, that movie shows a man being assassinated for no reason at all, nothing justify what happened. From the point of view of a right leaning person, Alex Pretti was actively interfering with law enforcement, and…

You seem to be using the terms "left leaning person" and "right leaning person" when you actually mean "normal people" and "sociopaths." Left and right have nothing to do with it.

The sociopaths you refer to see themselves as the normal people and you as the sociopath.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#117

Post by andsoitis »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #80
andsoitis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it also allows a lot of gems to rise to people's attention that never would have under the old mass culture making system. What is such an example? I just want to calibrate what you consider a gem that could not have been made in mass culture making system.

One salient example is Grant Sanderson's 3blue1brown math explainer youtube channel and the various other people inspired by him (and often using his open-source software) to make similar math content on youtube. The kinds of math videos he makes are a pretty niche interest when you consider percentage of a regional or national TV market, and so they didn't end up getting made in the 20th century broadcast TV era of…

> Grant Sanderson's 3blue1brown math explainer YouTube channel

Looks like a great recommendation; hadn't come across it before. Thanks!

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#118

Post by thombat »

cornholio wrote: post #114
thombat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, this is such a central point that it's made clear in the first chapter: The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being…

The review seems completely consumed by professional bitterness to the point where it becomes laughable. By the 1980s the methods of KGB, Stasi, Securitate etc. were well known in the west; how can he put this on paper and not realize he was being a complete fool: > [the governmnet in 1984] has a system of volunteer spies in which children report on their parents, and neighbours on each other. This cannot possibly wo…

The historian Hubertus Knabe made the horrifying observation of the film "The Lives of Others" that "There was a Schindler. There was no Wiesler", i.e. that in the whole history of the DDR they didn't in fact have a Stasi officer turning against the system from a crisis of conscience, as Wiesler does in the film. To prevent such long wolves they took the simple expedient of always having two officers performing the surveillance, so not just the target but also the Stasi men on the case were monitored.

Asimov is right to think that the costs were ruinous, as was the area of agricultural land sacrificed to the restricted zone near the border wall. But it was very much a price they were willing to pay.

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#119

Post by f4c39012 »

janwillemb wrote: post #44
ninalanyon wrote: post #4

I wonder what Asimov would write if he were to re-do that review now? Now that we actually do have televisions that can hear us as well as show us ads and in which governments of every nominal political stripe are falling over themselves in the rush to buy Palantir's products and to inject monitoring software into every mobile phone and 3D printer.

His point is that the Orwellian way of surveillance is impossible to do in practice, and that a proper science fiction writer would have left the surveillance to machines. So I think his critique is about the art of SF writing, not about the prediction of surveillance itself.

Asimov missed the idea of the panopticon here, whereby control is self-enforced by the fear of being caught because you can be watched at any time, not all the time

Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)

#120

Post by whizzter »

kergonath wrote: post #63
janwillemb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is that the Orwellian way of surveillance is impossible to do in practice, and that a proper science fiction writer would have left the surveillance to machines. So I think his critique is about the art of SF writing, not about the prediction of surveillance itself.

That’s just gate keeping. How hard does science fiction have to be in order to be considered worthwhile? Why does it matter?

Asimov's sci-fi has both hard and soft parts (especially his later works).

The main thing is that Asimov was more of a bright person(mensa member and professor) and good at making conjectures about development based on technology and it's impact on humans, rather than a great writer per-se (there's some famous interview from the 70s that makes a fair bit of things that weren't obvious at the time).

Like how he immediately goes to the feasibility of non-human total surveillance when concluding that the total surveillance of a population on the level of 1984 by humans is infeasible.

So this review is to large parts to be taken as an post-fact analysis about 1984 both from a standpoint of the predictions of it's conjectured future and an attempt to see _why_ conjectures failed (much of it, being attributed to Orwells need to expose his hatred for how infighting perverts socialistic causes).

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