How do you would describe the societies in Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451?

doger1,

Aldous Huxley's vision is more relevant and far more likely to happen than George Orwell's. Huxley's "A Brave New World" and Orwell's "1984" both predict the future of society, yet each has contrasting opinions about that future.

Perhaps the most important piece of evidence used to distinguish the two societies is the role of the media and technology.

Huxley asserted that what we love will ruin us. By inflicting too much pleasure we will self-destruct. The media, responding to our demands, inflicts pleasure. A flip through cable stations produces MTV (music videos), HSN (Home Shopping Network), GTV (golf), and Prevue Guide, where one can sit for 24 hours a day and be hypnotised by the endless, incessant scrolling of channel listings and broadcasts. Even on such informative stations like PBS, CNN and The Discovery Channel, we are mesmerized by detailed accounts of crimes, murders, and WWII documentaries.

Our love of violence, death and the bad guy as well as our fascination with the Yankees, the Oscars and The Office, combine to desensitize us to the realities of a modern world. We don't cringe at mangled dead bodies, we slow down to look at a traffic accident. We spend millions of dollars (never mind the homeless) to advertise during a football game.

This constant flood of information about things we love blurs the line between cognition and hypnosis, morality and unmorality. This constant flood renders us impossible to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad--it is all televised, printed, and e-mailed and put on instant replay. Only when we are awake and aware of the realities and boundaries that we must confine ourselves to can we truly prevent self-destruction.

The Internet is a striking example of too much information. Huxley asserted that no one would want to read a book. A quick visit to amazon.com proves him correct. I can read the first two chapters of Twain's "Huck Finn" on-line, and if I really like it, I can go to iTunes and get the book on a digital format. Why read when other people can read to me?

The Internet has unfortunately, more than "books." I can print my own alcohol-making manual, I can visit a chat room, I can order a sweater from A & F, and send my mom a Virtual Reality Mother's Day Card. All brought to me by Yahoo and my MacBook.

Despite an Orwellian projection of a dark, tyrannical oppression in which all truth is concealed from society, Huxley's prediction of the truth being drowned in a sea of irrelevance has been realized. Truth is shrouded by circuses of Britney Spears and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and anyone who claims they still saw Elvis. 

Civil libertarians are constantly on the alert to oppose tyranny have failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distraction.