Mark Zuckerberg's A Year of Books Selection
George Orwell s bleak visions of the future, one in which citizens are monitored through telescreens by an insidious Big Brother, has haunted our imagination long after the publication of "1984." Orwell s dystopian image of the telescreen as a repressive instrument of state power has profoundly affected our view of technology, posing a stark confrontational question: Who will be master, human or machine? Experience has shown, however, that Orwell s vision of the future was profoundly and significantly wrong: The conjunction of the new communications technologies has not produced a master-slave relation between person and computer, but rather exciting possibilities for partnership.
In an extraordinary demonstration of the emerging supermedium's potential to engender new forms of creativity, Huber s book boldly reimagines "1984" from the computer's point of view. After first scanning all of Orwell s writings into his personal computer, Huber used the machine to rewrite the book completely, for the most part using Orwell s own language. Alternating fiction and non-fiction chapters, Huber advances Orwell s plot to a surprising new conclusion while seamlessly interpolating his own explanations and arguments. The result is a fascinating utopian work which envisions a world at our fingertips of ever-increasing information, equal opportunity, and freedom of choice."