Orwell’s Revenge

Huber read 1984 and concluded Orwell got the technology backwards, then wrote this half-essay, half-novel to make the case. The fiction rewrites Orwell’s plot with the telescreen as a two-way instrument that citizens can use against the Party; the essay argues that networks and cheap copying decentralise power rather than concentrate it. Written in 1994 and best read now as an artefact of early techno-optimism, argued with real energy.