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Life and Fiction

Reading this Atlantic article on the relevance of 1984 made me want to re-read the book. The last time was too long ago. With life imitating art though, you have to wonder if it is still possible to parse out the bare bones genius of the novel anymore. 

Such was the experience of watching the movie Network recently. So much about the movie made in 1976 is true about the world today, that is easy to forget that such prescience was brilliant. 

When one of the characters in the move lays out his world view "There are no nations. There are no peoples ... There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business." Today you can no longer pretend this is satire. 

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