Tuesday, February 7, 2012

"Orwellian Irony in the Extreme"

Lifted in toto from Reason's Hit & Run blog:


Picture of the the day, courtesy the Twitter feeds of Libby Jackson, Soren Dayton, and Radley Balko.
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I believe that is the plaque at 22 Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London rather than the more famous 50 Lawford Road, Kentish Town residence.
Back in 2007 the London Evening Standard did an article, "George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house" about a third place Orwell called home (green plaque):
The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell's 1984 has become a reality - in the shadow of the author's former London home.

It may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell's vision of a society where cameras and computers spy on every person's movements is now here.
Scroll down for more


Foresight: The cameras crowd George Orwell's former London home
According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell's fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London....
Also at Hit & Run, a more upbeat story:
Ronald Bailey Reviews Abundance: Why The Future Will Be Much Better Than You Think

We linked to Forbes' extensive piece on the "Abundance..." author yesterday:
X Prize Founder Wants to Mine Asteroids