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1984 was published in 1949. It's a bit harsh to expect him to have anticipated computers
1984 imagines a telecom-enabled nationwide panopticon, which made for good speculative fiction in the 50’s (and also does now). Asimov wishes he had been that prescient.
Asimov is missing an important point that is pretty clearly spelled out in the novel, and this severely weakens his critique. I find this pretty funny because he starts off the essay insinuating that others who claim to love the book haven’t read it. Same to you for hating it without having understood it, Asimov!
"To summarise, then: George Orwell in 1984 was, in my opinion, engaging in a private feud with Stalinism, rather that attempting to forecast the future."
He really got it!
And shows how fundamentally Asimov misunderstands how totalitarian societies work. "Furthermore, he 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"
I think our current world proves that being watched by humans hits people in a way that being monitored by computers doesn't. Remember those "Surveillance Camera Man" videos? You can see countless examples online of people freaking out at a human engaging in public photography because they filmed them or snapped a picture. Often they do it while standing directly under surveillance cameras. It doesn't matter to people if their ring camera is using facial recognition and logging everything within its field of view and secretly forwarding that data to law enforcement agencies, but try standing on the sidewalk in front of their house and recording everyone who comes and goes and see how they react.
A street photographer is a much smaller threat. What's the worst some random person on a public street can do with your photograph? Compare that with the harm that can be done by a massive corporation with billions at their disposal who has been building a dossier on you for decades and who records you 24/7 and is determined to use that data in any way that makes them profit regardless of what you want or what the law says.
Also, Orwell was shot in the neck in Spain while literally fighting fascists.
Still, thank you for the link to Asimov’s review. I’ll read it later.
His work house experiences informed 1984. The original poster in this comment thread is just trolling beyond belief, and also, seems to have no grasp of the topics at hand what so ever.