Science Fiction and Technological Progression in the 20th Century - Part II

George Orwell – 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (1949)

Predictions: Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), Synthesized Music, Voice-Dialing and Automated Phone Systems

CCTV

Nineteen Eighty-Four has been one of the most analyzed works of science fiction, spanning high school and college classrooms across the board. While it is easy to take things from the novel and blow them out of proportion, George Orwell laid the framework for the present day and nearly ubiquitous networks of surveillance cameras in metropolitan areas.

One of the main inventions from this novel is the Telescreen. The Telescreen does not operate in the same way that televisions in the 1940s did. Televisions then were primarily operated using CRT (cathode ray tube) technology as opposed to the flat-screen plasma and LCD (liquid crystal display) televisions today. The Telescreen is more representative of the latter than the former as it is described as an "oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall." Between the novel and film versions of Nineteen Eighty-Four the overall concept of the Telescreen emerges as a hybrid of modern television monitors and the transceiver. The description of its function is stated as the following:

"The Telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. The instrument could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely."

Obviously the lack of an on/off switch is unrealistic for this device as most electrical devices are able to be turned on and off. While the Telescreen is shaped like a flat screen television, it is never described as having an incorporated camera. In the film, there seems to be a low resolution projector involved rather than just a large sensing flat screen. Although there is never any explicit mention of integrated circuitry to explain the success of the flat-screen model, Orwell painted a pretty clear picture of what was to come years later.

Synthesized Music

Another device created by Orwell in this novel is called The Versificator. Orwell's description of this device is here:

"The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a Versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound."

Over time, the growth of synthesized music created solely by computers has increased. Many songs either take snippets of existing music and lay them under some electronic beat or rely solely on electronic systems to create the music. Although Orwell was far off the mark in predicting the complete depletion of "real" music, he had a heads-up on some genres of music that were to emerge years after his time.

Voice-Dialing and Automated Phone Systems

While Orwell slightly overshot modern technology with this one, his literary invention called the Speakwrite foretold something that would become a main feature of the present-day phone system. In recent times, when one places a phone call to a place of business, they are often greeted by an automated phone system with menus that support the touch tone phone. Those who dial from a rotary telephone are becoming fewer in number, and have been the exception for many years now. Once the place of business is reached by telephone, one is given the option to speak their menu choices and through voice recognition, be routed to the proper sub-menu. One may also phone a friend simply by speaking the person's name into the receiver of their phone.

An artist's portrayal of the Speakwrite

Similar to the functionality described above, the Speakwrite is a device in which one speaks words aloud and is able to transmit them to a typed text. One would say something into the microphone similar to the way one would type out a text message character by character. While this is a far cry from extreme technological advancement, it was certainly a big leap for a man to make in the 1940s through a work of fiction.

References:

http://www.technovelgy.com/

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/05/05/10-things-science-fiction-got-right/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television