Joe Moody’s Web Adventures

The Raiders are up against the favored Washington Redskins, but the Redskins are losing this Super Bowl. During a two-minute timeout, the most amazing ad comes on TV. For months there’s been heavy coverage of George Orwell’s book 1984.

Orwell’s book is about a world ruled by “Big Brother,” who controls every aspects of public and private life in a hyper-modern society

Big Brother videotapes people’s lives to ensure their conformity, and at the same time broadcasts his mind-control messages to his subjects, like “War is Peace” and “Ignorance is Strength.”

This world was less feasible in 1948 when the book was written, but it was perfectly easy to achieve in the real 1984.

And here the story was being spoofed in a Superbowl ad for a new computer. It starts with a close-up of Big Brother shouting his mantras to the masses:

“Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!”

The ad shows Big Brother’s subjects watching in a trance, drab and lifeless in front of their on-screen ruler.

Suddenly an athlete who looks fresh out of the Olympics rushes down the aisle, she flings a sledgehammer into the screen, obliterating the image of Big Brother. Then the words: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984′.”

So this computer will help ensure individuality is never trampled upon by an oppressor.

Up to this point, computers are only used by a handful of corporations, universities and young hackers.

My brother and I fell into the hacker category, playful hackers anyway.

We could log in to the local supermarket’s computer and turn the produce section’s irrigation system on and off.

We could log into online bulletin board systems known as BBS’s and mess around until we gained administrator access, then post jokes in place of their serious discusions.

We never did any real damage, but the emerging digital world was like our new playground, and a great escape from the Midwestern winter blues.