An Interview with George Orwell & Paddy Chayefsky: Part 1 - Jaffer Ali - MediaBizBloggers

Publisher39s Note This blogs reflects a fictional narrativeWhat follows is an imaginary discussion with Paddy Chayefsky who wrote the script for the award winning film Network and Eric Arthur Blair better known by his pen name George Orwell Whenever possible their words were taken verbatim from their respective and considerable bodies of workI hope you see their relevance to today39s media and online marketing industries Their eloquence necessitates splitting this discussion into two partsJaffer Ali Today we are honored to bring two literary giants together for a long overdue discussion These prolific writers and social critics left behind much for us to digest For our purposes here we asked Mr Orwell and Mr Chayefsky to contrast and compare their respective seminal works 1984 and Networkwith an eye to what is happening in today39s mediadriven world Thank you gentlemen for taking the time to share your thoughts with our readersPaddy Chayefsky I would first like to say how much in debt I am to Mr Orwell I was a young man when I first read 1984 and I had regular nightmares about one day waking up in a place called OceaniaGeorge Orwell That is very kind of you Mr ChayefskyPC Please call me PaddyGO Thank you And I must say when I first viewed Network I experienced a curious sense of damp233jamp224 vuJA If we can break from this lovefest for a few minutes I39m sure our readers would like to know just how prescient each of you believe you were with 1984 and NetworkGO Well thankfully I didn39t live long enough to hear my nom de plume associated with all things oppressive Apparently it is rare indeed these days to avoid references to this or that being quotOrwellianquot But on a more serious note it is difficult to observe 21stcentury thought and attitude and not conclude that societal and technological perversions have exceeded my wildest dreamsamp8230or I should say nightmaresJA How soGO Well for starters this generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that preceded it and wiser than all those that will follow As Mark Twain reminds us this happens with every generation but today39s generation has such a lack of historical perspective the past for all intents and purposes has been figuratively wiped outPC George can I call you George I think I know why this is the case Because less than three percent of the people read books Because less than fifteen percent read newspapers or even consume news online The only truth folks know is what they are fed over the television or computer Right now there is a whole generation that never knew anything that didn39t emanate from some virtual sourceGO It certainly is the case that to see what is in front of one39s nose requires a constant struggle I once said quotWho controls the past controls the future Who controls the present controls the pastquot When I wrote 1984 sixty years ago the techniques of controlling information were nothing like those we see todayPC I am glad you said that I do not believe your novel envisioned such collaboration between government and the private sector Back when you were writing totalitarian governments controlled media out in the open Everybody knew it But not so today Case in point just a few years ago the US government briefed 150 generals on exactly how the Pentagon wanted to sell the war in Iraq They were then dispatched to be the sanctioned sources for all media George if you don39t mind me saying this you idealized the media because you trusted people like Edward R Murrow You never envisioned the private sector as government propagandists You never considered how or why The New York Times would hire someone like Judith Miller Pentagon groupie to promote a government agendaamp8230 or imagined someone like Karl Rove paying 250000 to a journalist Armstrong Williams to promote the party line As far back as 1979 my friend Carl Bernstein broke the story that 400 journalists were on the CIA payroll Propaganda has now become even less transparent than it was in the days of Stalin when EVERYONE knew the news was quotcookedquotGO Your point is well taken Totalitarian government was the burning issue of the day back in 1949 Today I see the collusion between government and the private sector spawning a new breed of oppressive fascism the offspring of an inseparable union between business and statePC Precisely You and yours perceived world events in terms of nations and peoples But today there are no nations There are no peoples There are no Russians There are no Arabs There are no third worlds There is no West There is only one holistic system of systems one vast interwoven interacting multivariate multinational dominion of currencies Petrodollars electrodollars multidollars reichmarks rins rubles pounds and shekels It is this nameless faceless global currency exchange that defines the totality of life on this planet That is the nature of the world we have created for ourselvesJA That39s quite an impassioned response Mr Chayefsky Are you suggesting that the private sector has replaced the public sector as society39s villainPC Now is not the time for naivetamp233 Public officials are bought and sold like any commodity If you wanted to maintain illusions you should have interviewed Judith Miller and Karl Rove rather than George and me Those who perceive any meaningful daylight between government and big business are either not paying attention or are selectively blindPC Ask yourself Who received 700 million in bailout money from the Bush Administration The very same guys who received three times that amount from the Obama Administration that39s who Our capacity for trust allows us to be easily seduced through clever political language and a media that appears free when in reality it39s all theater bought and paid for by the highest bidderGO Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucketJA Mr Orwell I believe you39re exaggerating Do you also feel compelled to indict the freemarket processes that fuel our consumer cultureGO Please remember all this cyber nonsense is new to me But it doesn39t take a genius to understand that behavioral targeting is about as bad as it gets I39m not sure it39s even advertising What I do know for certain is that behavioral targeting represents a complete violation of our personal lives And it gets worse the more we expose ourselves to its misguided purposePC I must caution you George when you mention behavioral targeting you39re meddling with the primal forces of nature You may think you39ve merely commented on an illconceived business practice but in reality an entire online industry has placed its eggs in this one basket Take companies like Choicepoint Datran Media and Axciom for instance They have accumulated huge databases of personal information on private citizens I know that at least two of these companies have large contracts with the government to furnish this very informationJA Are you both in agreement that behavioral targeting technologies are unethical perhaps even immoralGO I believe the potential consequences of this new science extend beyond their moral implications Illconsidered or unconsidered technologies are inherently dangerous I have read what purveyors of behavioral targeting BT have to say about their craft and they39re either impervious to the truth or purposely silent regarding their own fearsTo be continued next weekamp8230About Jaffer Ali Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense The Video Snack Network With more than 100000 advertiserfriendly video clips licensed from major film and TV studios the Vidsense Video Snack Network of more than 50000 safeforwork websites delivers millions of qualified visitors directly to advertiser websites on a pure PayPerVisitor PPV basisRead all Jafferamp8217s MediaBizBlogger commentaries at Jaffer Ali MediaBizBloggeramp160

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