I first read Nineteen Eighty-Four—not 1984, but Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is the correct title—when I was still a teenager. It made a tremendous impression on me, with the result that I’ve read and re-read it many times since. Just recently I did so again, only to discover, once again, how spot-on George Orwell really was. Not for nothing have I been using the title of one of his columns, “As I Please,” as the motto of the present blog. What follows is an attempt to set forth some of the points on which he was right—and those on which he was not.

List of things Orwell did foresee.

– The partition of the world among three great states: To wit, Oceania, Eurasia (which, so far, remains divided into EU-nia and Russia) and Eastasia.

– The fact that these states are, or easily could be made, self-sufficient. Which means that they have no real reason to fight each other except mutual hatred, often artificially stirred up by propaganda.

– The fact that these states are always at some kind of war with each other. The importance, in this war, of air attacks on civilians and floating fortresses. Ask the people in Beijing, who are just now rehearsing attacks on the American variation of the fortresses.

– The fact that, since all the states have plenty of nuclear weapons, final victory is impossible. To avoid destruction, the states take care to ensure that the war in question remains limited to the periphery (what is known, today, as the “developing” world). One interesting omission, though; the only mention of India is as a battlefield. Apparently Orwell did not consider it capable of becoming a great power.

– Constant close supervision of each individual, made possible by the introduction of increasingly sophisticated technological devices so ubiquitous that there is practically no way of escaping them.

– The rise of thoughtcrime; even in “advanced” Western countries, some would say especially in “advanced” Western countries, there are any number of thoughts which, if you dare express them, will land you into trouble. Some of it very serious indeed. For example, the idea (in large parts of EU-nia) that mass immigration can be bad for a country and even lead to its destruction. Or the idea, popular in North Oceania, that certain groups in the population are culturally more inclined to commit more crimes than others; unless we speak of heterosexual white men, of course.

– Partly because both the state and the high-tech companies employ hundreds of thousands of censors, partly because of the sheer number of persons and organizations with access to the Net, distinguishing between truth and falsehood has become all but impossible.

– Thanks to Foucault and company, objectivity, invented by René Descartes about 350 years ago and developing into the real clue to the modern world, no longer exists. Especially in the humanities and the social sciences, knowledge has been turned into a mushy mess. The color of vomit.

– The rise, especially in legalese as well as the social sciences, of a form of Newspeak. A language replete with acronyms and consisting of long strings of nouns linked by very few verbs and often meaning almost nothing.

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– For visiting a prostitute, men (Party members) are punished. Judging by the number of complaints about sexual harassment etc., apparently far more women hate sex than we, misguided but horny men, ever suspected. To them sex is a disgusting thing, like an enema.

– Julia, the novel’s heroine, is practically the only female character. About 27 years old (but still referred to as a “girl”) and a member of the Outer Party, i.e not just a female “prole” beast of burden, she hates children and does not intend to have them. Ever.

– “Everyone always confesses” in the end. As shown by the fact that the vast majority of the criminal accused, fearing a trial whose outcome is almost certain (in my own country, fewer than 2 percent are acquitted) accept a plea bargain.

List of things Orwell did not foresee.

– The rise of organized feminism with its first, second, third and fourth waves. Nowhere in Nineteen Eighty-Four is there the slightest hint that such a thing exists or could exist. As Winston Smith, the book’s hero, says of Julia, she is only a rebel below the waist. Nor, on the other hand, does Orwell show the slightest understanding of the terrible effects sexual harassment has on poor, hapless women who, each time someone says boo, need lifetime psychological treatment (as the expense of the boo-er, of course).

– The rise of terrorism, unless it is state terrorism.

– The truly meteoric rise of computers and other means of surveillance. Technologically speaking, Nineteen Eighty-Four is rather conservative. The only real innovation is the telescreen, a device that enables its operators to watch those who are in front of it. . Considering what modern computers can do, life in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a picnic.

– In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the method used to make Winston love Big Brother is torture. Today, torture is often unnecessary. Instead, we witness the rise of biological- and brain science. It enables, or will soon enable, the state—the coldest of all cold monsters, as Nietzsche calls it—to interfere, not just with what we own, do, and think, but with what, biologically, we are.

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Will things get better? I do not know. But definitely not before the worst comes along.

Thank God, I am 75 years old.