Geek Army Knife interview – “What Orwell didn’t predict”
3 Comments Published by Sanjay Khanna July 14th, 2008 in Clarity, Macroeconomics, Pattern Recognition, Sustainability, TechnologyLast week, thanks to Stephanie Rieger's kind recommendation, I was interviewed by Henriette Weber Kristiansen (based in Copenhagen, Denmark) and Duarte Velez Grilo (based in Lisbon, Portugal) for Geek Army Knife, a playful, engaging podcast that Henriette once referred to (tongue firmly in cheek) as the "the most useful podcast in the WORLD!"
The questions-what is calm technology, why so little movement on climate change, etc.-were big, fat and hairy, more suitable, in all probability, to disquisition than sound bite. 
Here's the link.
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Hi Sanjay,
Thought the interview was great, v engaging, however just to clarify, the Orwell reference about government messages and propaganda shaping the public mind and the public discourse is from 1984 and not Politics and the English Language.
Having said that, after reading the above essay, I now have a damn good list of dos and don’ts with respect to my native tongue. This from the anti-Big Brother himself (from the above work):
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
It’s a simple list, but very useful!
A reminder to those of you who’ve forgotten your high school reading…his stuff in 1984 on “Newspeak” (the official language of Oceania that is based on the English language and “designed to diminish the range of thought) is free from the word “free” if used in the context of “politically free” or “intellectually free.” From 1984…”The word free still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as “The dog is free from lice” or “This field is free from weeds.”‘ There are all sorts of newspeak-isms such as replacing “bad” with “ungood” and so forth.
I was wondering, since our minds are clearly shaped by marketing “speak” and PR “speak” perhaps more so (or at least as much) as government “speak,” how will “realistic sanctuary” protect, or help us weather the tides of branding blitzes and marketing coups? Is there a use for it in this sense?
Hi, Lissa: Thanks. Actually, “Politics and the English Language” describes the deterioration of the English language in general, and as the essay proceeds Orwell homes in on political writing and propaganda, arguing that the precise use of language makes it impossible to be swayed by muddy English that hides brutality, lies, and the like. So my point, I think, is still correct in substance, while you are right to bring 1984 and Newspeak into play in our discussion here.
You ask how “realistic sanctuary” might contribute to our weathering the public impact of branding and marketing. I think that the idea is that using sanctuary to slow down–and to nurture inner calm and intuition–should, in time, help to mitigate the impact of branding and marketing speak. It just requires us to apply Orwell’s dictum on the use of English language in the context of marketing and advertising, as well as politics.
Sanjay: Thanks for your comments. You’re absolutely right. I was going from memory and when I went back to read “Politics and the English Language” I was blown away by its relevance. He writes about “People… imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps…” as being referred to by government as an “elimination of unreliable elements.” It is like America’s “friendly fire,” a word that was used a lot during the first Gulf War.
The problem as I see it with simply being told to draw on sanctuary in this instance to help us mitigate the impact of branding and marketing is that we are under the spell of these entities and therefore haven’t the motivation to take the necessary steps. Instead of slowing down, we seek so-called sanctuary through our power as consumers because we’re told certain products can provide us with inner calm, happiness or whatever.
Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew), the founder of PR was the first in NA to use the unconscious to manipulate populations through advertising. He believed that society was dangerous and needed to be controlled. Cars were no longer prized for their reliability but because they made us feel a certain way…sexy, desirable. He allowed (now) US owned Chiquita bananas to infiltrate Guatemala by painting a democratically elected president as a communist. This is the origin of the word “banana republic.”