朱蕭發：誤讀《1984》的人啊，你們終有一天會愛上“老大哥”

在中學時期，早熟的青年喬治•奧威爾面對一幫聚眾鬧事的熊孩子，保護了失明而佝僂的阿道司•赫胥黎，那一幕恰好構成了今天自由派鬥爭的縮影。米努•丁肖在為歷史學家斯蒂文•朗西曼（朗西曼與奧威爾是伊頓公學的同窗，赫胥黎是他們的法語老師）撰寫的傳記中寫道：“這是一幅奇巧的圖景，《1984》的創作者像堅盾般守護着《美麗新世界》的預言家。”

如今，在經歷了英國脱歐、特朗普得勢、劍橋分析公司醜聞等事件之後，西方評論家時常用這個場景來借喻個人自由主義價值觀面對被蠱惑的愚昧羣氓，正在蒙受怎樣的打擊。但誠如丁肖所言，“也許，它看起來太過奇巧。”

在報道劍橋分析公司的醜聞時，英國《觀察家報》多次嫺熟地使用“反烏托邦”（dystopia）這個詞語來形容逐漸水落石出的案情。然而正如丁肖有理由質疑朗西曼目擊事件的真實性，我們也必須審慎看待關於劍橋分析的所有新聞報道背後的假設。這件事真的可以稱作“反烏托邦”嗎？即便可以，“反烏托邦”又有什麼不對嗎？

要了解西方，就必須瞭解“反烏托邦”對西方人意味着什麼。可以説，阿道司•赫胥黎的《美麗新世界》和喬治•奧威爾的《1984》是“反烏托邦”文學領域兩部最偉大且最具先見之明的著作。這兩部小説清晰地表達了現代自由主義的慾望和不滿，通過起伏的情節中它們傳遞了一種核心的焦慮感：我們能否既保證個人自由永遠煥發革命性的榮光，又不放棄秩序和安全——哪怕現實似乎告訴我們，唯有權力和層級制度才是後兩者的保障？讀過現代史的人會很自然地認為，個人自由與社會秩序好比魚與熊掌不可兼得。

《美麗新世界》和《1984》

在《美麗新世界》中，世界國通過強制洗腦宣傳和建立在基因工程之上的種姓制度，創造出無窮無盡的消費，並由此獲得了和平與安全，但卻是犧牲了自由。與人類歷史上的各種體制一樣，這樣的社會仍然建立在大批奴隸的脊背上。不過，巨大的科技革新使底層階級根本無需暴力脅迫便甘心受剝削，因為他們已經愛上了奴役。出生在“野蠻人保留地”的域外人（他被人喚作“野蠻人先生”）不曾經歷過世界國的科技變遷，因此保有原始的精神狀態。赫胥黎通過描寫他的到來向讀者提出了一個兩難的問題：我們究竟想要自由還是快樂？

小説《1984》裏描寫的國家則實行一種嚴苛得多的極權主義，它不惜大搞暗殺行動、大規模監控民眾來維護社會秩序。大洋國的執政黨“英社黨”對未來毫無積極願景，它為了權力而行使權力，不惜毀滅語言、記憶和慾望等思想的載體。其卓有成效的手段之一是禁絕“思想犯罪”，將異見坑殺在被表達出來之前。另一種策略是鼓吹“雙重思想”，即同時相信兩個相互矛盾的真相——明知二者皆謬，卻仍堅信不疑。

與《美麗新世界》一樣，奧威爾也設計了“天降救星”（deux ex machina）的情節：温斯頓•史密斯有着不知來自何處的孤單靈魂，他反抗着那個與自己人生理念背道而馳的國家。然而掌握一切情況的統治者卻通過折磨和説理雙重手段改造温斯頓的思想，使其符合英社黨的世界觀。

劍橋分析是一家數據分析公司，許多人（不僅僅是自由主義左派人士，還包括這家公司的員工）都認為英國脱歐派和特朗普之所以能在公投和大選中以微弱優勢取勝，劍橋分析功不可沒。該公司宣稱能通過分析網民的私人數據——主要是臉書裏的點贊數——按照個性特徵而不是人口統計數據來將用户歸入253種模型。

雖然我們尚不清楚此類信息到底對英國脱歐公投和美國總統大選具體產生了什麼作用，但至少我們知道它可以定向發送政治信息使之符合目標讀者的偏好。該公司前研究主任克里斯托弗•懷利解釋道：“比較嚴謹的人希望事事都有結構可依循，所以對他們而言，移民問題的解決方案應當突出秩序，而邊境牆正是這樣的象徵。你發送的信息可能在一部分人看來毫無道理，但在另一部分人眼中則顯得明智無比。”只要分析70個你點過讚的內容，劍橋分析公司對你的瞭解程度將超過你的朋友；分析150個點贊，它將超過你的父母；分析300個點贊，它將比你枕邊人還了解你。

曾任劍橋分析公司總裁的尼克斯在分析美國艾奧瓦州選情

5月，劍橋分析公司在媒體負面報道中宣告破產。然而，不論是在公共還是私人領域，仍有機構（如Data Propria和Emerdata）在從事數據分析。它們終將像赫胥黎和奧威爾那樣，在某個方面解答自由主義的謎題。把人工智能引入自由民主體制的天才之處在於，它既使投票者感受到渴求的自由感，又鞏固了社會迫切需要的秩序。

盧梭曾反對束縛人類的“枷鎖”。學習哲學的人必定想不到，這位思想家的理念竟能為這個“有史以來最強大的意念控制機器”辯護。但這恰好展示了過去250年裏自由主義外延擴張到了何等程度。主張平等的民主從來都不是人們各自為政的混戰，它需要靠看不見的手來巧妙指引。

盧梭在《愛彌兒：論教育》一書中闡述了個體需要滿足什麼要求，才有資格締結“社會契約”。他把自己代入家庭教師的角色，為學生愛彌兒營造出一個有序自由、清晰易懂的世界。他一絲不苟地備課，將知識切割包裝開來，按照必要的先後次序教授愛彌兒。愛彌兒絕不可以試圖學習盧梭認為他目前還力所不逮的知識，也不應該知道自己所學的就是“知識”，而且還必須對師生關係的本質一無所知。這一切聽上去是不是有點耳熟？

與盧梭一樣，社交媒體推送的新聞也給我們創造出一個有序自由、清晰易懂的世界。在一般情況下，這不會造成混亂。但在當前這個年代，由於各個公民的接受信息的來源略有不同，它們只會反射出我們所理解的世界。這樣一來，由我們自己的疑慮、渴望和偏見構成的主觀現實彷彿因此具備了客觀性。因此我們覺得臉書、推特等社交媒體上那些與我們觀念相左的人彷彿來自其他星球；而我們認為自己則好比《1984》裏的温斯頓•史密斯，在權力面前單槍匹馬地堅持真理。

互聯網的極度主觀性給我們以高度的自由，但秩序卻是匱乏的。在谷歌公司董事長埃裏克•施密特看來，互聯網是“歷史上規模最大的無政府狀態實驗”。難怪基辛格博士會對互聯網大加批判，失望地將網絡世界形容為“霍布斯式的自然狀態”。如果要用一句話總結霍布斯的思想，那就是一旦讓暴民當政，混亂將摧毀文明。可基辛格並沒有就此推導出一個必然的結論，即當前形態的互聯網不具有可持續性。互聯網這片“狂野西部”的沃土，必定給強有力的暴君留出了統治的空間。這樣一來，利維坦式的劍橋分析公司便登上了歷史舞台。

劍橋分析公司通過技術使網民們激動地品嚐極度主觀性的滋味，卻又以隱秘的手段將秩序施加於眾人。它提供的信息不一定非要印證我們的世界觀，也可以是對我們情緒的挑撥。該公司前任首席執行官亞歷山大•尼克斯曾親口説道：“只要有人願意相信，真相不一定要是真的。”克里斯托弗•懷利在揭發他曾經的老闆時，有句話説的很對：“你在製造真相。”

但製造真相並沒有錯。盧梭向我們揭示，真相或許是民主社會的必需品，但它終究是人為虛構出來的，而真相的製造權應該掌握在國家手裏。劍橋分析公司和小説《1984》裏的英社黨有同樣的形而上哲學理念：現實只存在於我們的腦海裏。也正如書裏的“老大哥”一般，劍橋分析公司做出了明智而有能力的決定，即利用虛構的現實來維護秩序而不是散播混亂。

人們常常忘記《1984》是個積極樂觀的故事。儘管外人可能一廂情願地認為大洋國的生活充滿殘酷，但温斯頓發現，對占人口85%的無產者來説，生活唯一變糟糕的地方是啤酒不再以“品脱”而是按“升”計量。英社黨或許會人為降低民眾的生活水平，但那只是為了避免全面衝突導致生活水平進一步惡化。另一方面，工人階級顯著的自豪感和身份認同感也抵消了生活水平下降帶來的負面影響，而這正是今天的西方社會嚴重缺乏的。小説的結局皆大歡喜：“但是沒有事，一切都很好，鬥爭已經結束了。他戰勝了自己。他熱愛老大哥。”這一刻，温斯頓終於願意相信自己已經得到了自由。

倘若盧梭成為全體公民的家庭教師，他將與“老大哥”沒什麼兩樣

《1984》和《愛彌兒》對國家教育的構想沒有本質的不同，唯一的區別在於奧威爾的提議更具有延展性。倘若盧梭成為國家全體公民的家庭教師，他將與“老大哥”沒什麼兩樣。但眼下，無數盧梭式“家庭教師”並存的局面是難以維繫的。如果這種狀況持續下去，柏拉圖對民主的判斷將得到證實。他認為，倡導人人平等的民主會引發混亂並最終導致理想國覆滅。到目前為止，西方的自由民主並不像柏拉圖預期的那樣強調平等主義。相反，西式民主一直堅持通過看不見的手來引導民眾——也就是沃爾特•李普曼口中的“不知所措的烏合之眾”。

絕佳的例證之一便是冷戰期間研究公共關係和政治宣傳的愛德華•伯尼斯提出的“操控同意”。美國政府通過操控美國民眾，使他們對蘇聯共產主義產生恐懼，並以此捍衞自由市場式民主。在格雷靈和喬姆斯基等著名思想家的眼中，劍橋分析公司“製造真相”的行為是對自由民主的威脅，但其實它恰恰是自由民主得以在網絡時代賴以存續的關鍵。

許多人認為，自由行動的理性人構成了自由主義民主體制的根基。這種根深蒂固的誤解好比一條有待勇士征服的惡龍。自世紀之交以來，欺世盜名者篡奪了對民主的解釋權，使歷史上取得成功的民主制度被邊緣化。託尼•布萊爾擔任英國首相的時期，大概就是最好的例證。布萊爾提出 “持續民主”的概念，導致政策制定完全取決於民眾五花八門的衝動和欲求。這樣一來，政府便不可能誕生任何能改善世界的宏偉構想。

劍橋分析公司已經向世界展示了人工智能的強大，完全有能力幫助人類達成宏偉的目標。然而如果在無人承擔責任的監管真空裏使用這種工具，政治人物將淪為迎合民眾情感的商品。但我們同樣可以利用這項技術來安撫網絡空間裏的烏合之眾，或藉助它來為新政策贏得支持。不論如何，人工智能都可以使結果看起來像是公民自由思想的產物。正如臉書首席運營官雪莉•桑德伯格所説，“谷歌的作用在於幫助人們找到想要購買的東西，而臉書則幫助人們決定他們想要什麼。”

西方社會的右派憧憬小政府，自由主義左派則對權威保持疑懼，只要有人敢提出權力在運用得當的情況下是一股積極力量，難免面臨 “法西斯主義”或“極權主義”的尖鋭指控。美國前總統富蘭克林•羅斯福和歐盟委員會前主席羅伊•詹金斯都曾面臨這樣的問題。

但今天的情況比過去更危急，我們面臨兩種選擇：秩序或毀滅。歷史學家尼爾•弗格森曾指出，歷史上與互聯網相似度最高的技術革命是印刷機的發明。印刷術導致歐洲迎來了長達150年的破壞與毀滅，直到《威斯特伐利亞和約》簽訂後衝突才慢慢平息。

1520年12月10日，馬丁·路德公開燒燬教皇詔書和教會法律，宣稱“他們燒了我的書，我也燒他們的書。”

我們今天的處境與赫胥黎1931年出版《美麗新世界》時頗為相似。儘管這部小説早已被尊奉為反極權主義的聖典，但赫胥黎在創作其“反烏托邦”社會時，態度模稜兩可、耐人尋味。彼時，作者面對的是一個蹣跚前行的英國，它剛剛經歷了經濟大蕭條、英鎊拋售狂潮、金本位制度的廢止、緊急政府成立等一系列波折。經濟學家凱恩斯提出，只有增加公共事業和消費的開支，英國的諸多問題才能得到解決。赫胥黎對凱恩斯的提議嗤之以鼻，將他比作法國大革命的領袖羅伯斯庇爾。這當然不是什麼好話。

面對處於混亂邊緣的世界，赫胥黎不得不做出選擇，一方面是凱恩斯乏味的經濟方案，另一方面則是絕不可接受的、公共秩序的災難性崩潰。赫胥黎寫道：“迫於形勢的人文主義者可能會訴諸科學的政治宣傳手段，正如迫於形勢的自由主義者會訴諸獨裁統治。（因為）任何形式的秩序都好過混亂。”

正因如此，赫胥黎才會在《美麗新世界》裏違心地默許凱恩斯的消費主義式獨裁統治，使其凌駕於任何形式的破壞與毀滅之上。在小説裏，每個人都享有安全，除了個別不尋常的人大家都是快樂的。依現代自由派的眼光看，小説中的人物可能不“自由”，但他們認為自己是自由的，因為他們擁有“獲得快樂的自由”。考慮到二戰時期人類經歷了閃電戰、奧斯維辛集中營、廣島的核打擊等一系列黑暗篇章，如果赫胥黎的“反烏托邦”能在技術進步的作用下變得毫無痛楚，那我們憑什麼對它提出哪怕一絲一毫的反對呢？

自由派用“反烏托邦”來形容劍橋分析公司，這種説法固然不錯，但如果他們能理解赫胥黎在思想上的勇氣，便不難發現“反烏托邦”不見得是件壞事。從柏拉圖的《理想國》到歐盟委員會主席讓-克洛德•容克所説的“日益密切的聯盟”，烏托邦最顯著的特徵是它背後那盲目的理想主義和不切實際的空想。

“烏托邦”來自1516年托馬斯•莫爾的同名小説《烏托邦》，這個詞在希臘語中同時包含着“不存在的地方”和“好地方”兩重含義。有一種經典解讀認為，《烏托邦》揭示出私有財產（私有財產是伊麗莎白時期英國社會的根基）不見容於完美的公益社會（commonwealth）。作者將書中一條河流的命名為“安尼德魯斯河”，在希臘語中是“無水之河”的意思，更將主人公的姓氏喚作“希斯洛德”，在希臘語裏的意思是“胡説八道之人”，以此來諷喻完美世界根本不存在。從雅各賓派到蘇聯人，歷史向我們反覆證明了莫爾的笑話有多麼危險和致命。

與“烏托邦”的險惡本質相比，我們反倒應該歡迎劍橋分析公司頭上貼着的“反烏托邦”標籤。反烏托邦最大特點在於它在現實中的可操作性，它致力於解決各種意識形態內部的矛盾，是警醒盲目理想主義者的良藥。在這個意義上，《美麗新世界》、《1984》和劍橋分析公司向我們呈現的世界是相當具有吸引力的。

隨着美國國安局的稜鏡項目和劍橋分析公司的操作浮出水面，西方世界必須改變他們對中國監控系統的認知和態度。中國公民和西方國家公民享有的隱私權其實程度相當，唯一的區別在於西方國家的私營領域和公共部門都參與了大規模監控項目。

因此，當西方評論人士抨擊百度總裁李彥宏關於中國公民願意用隱私換取便利的言論時，他們其實應該好好考慮一下自己立場。

福柯認為，監視必然導致不同程度的自律，有紀律的社會是以監控為手段的

如今，西方國家的民眾無時無刻不受到監視。但監控者是誰，出於什麼目的，大家一無所知。西方人和中國人一樣，都是邊沁所説的“全景敞視監獄”（或稱“圓形監獄”）裏的一員。但與傳統觀念相反，今天的全景敞視建築並不是一所真正的監獄。我們的行為沒有受限，我們可以隨心所欲地走動，可以自由地思考。慢慢的，牆將從我們的視線裏消失，我們會逐漸習慣這個環境，不再覺得這有什麼不妥。一切終將好起來，鬥爭終將結束。我們終將戰勝自己。我們終將愛上老大哥。

（觀察者網周然譯，楊晗軼校，翻頁閲讀英文原文）

Cambridge Analytica and Dystopias

It’s today’s liberal struggle in microcosm: the precocious young George Orwell, defending the blind, stooping Aldous Huxley from a rabble of tormenting schoolboys. As told by MinooDinshaw in his biography of the historian Steve Runciman (himself a contemporary of Orwell’s at Eton College, where Huxley was a master), “it is a neat image: the prophet of Brave New World shielded by the creator of 1984”. Following Brexit, Trump, and Cambridge Analytica, this is (is) a scene often invoked by Western commentators: the values of liberal individualism, rained down upon by demagoguery and stupidity. But, as Dinshaw concludes, it is “perhaps a little too neat”.

In its masterful reporting of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, The Observer referred to the unfolding events, on multiple occasions, as ‘dystopian’. Just as Dinshaw rightly calls into question the veracity of that which Runciman supposedly saw as a schoolboy during the First World War, we must scrutinize the assumptions upon which all coverage of Cambridge Analytica’s recent activity has been made. Is it dystopian? And if so, is there anything wrong with that?

To understand the West, you must understand their dystopias. The greatest and most prescient of these are Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. These novels articulate the desires and discontents of modern liberalism. At their heaving centres is a shared anxiety: can we retain individual freedom in all its persistently revolutionary glory without compromising on our demand for order and security, which can seemingly be provided only by power and hierarchy? Any student of modern history would be forgiven for thinking the two to be mutually exclusive.

Through the enforcement of brainwashing and a caste system founded on genetic engineering, the state in Brave New World succeeds in creating boundless consumption. This pacifies the world’s one state and gives them security, but this is at the expense of liberty. Like all others before it, this society has been forged off the backs of a population of slaves. However, vast technological changes have enabled this underclass to be exploited not out of violent coercion, but love for their servitude. When an outsider (who becomes known as Mr Savage) arrives from a society that has not experienced such technological, and therefore spiritual upheaval, Huxley confronts us with the question of whether we want to be free or happy.

In 1984, the state enforces order through a much harsher totalitarianism, based on widespread state-sponsored killing, and mass surveillance. ‘The Party’ of Oceania does not pursue any positive vision. It exercises power for its own sake, enforcing this through the destruction of language, memory, and desire as vehicles for thought. One of the ways in which it has achieved this is through the outlawing of ‘thoughtcrime’ – dissident views are sniffed out before they are expressed. The other is ‘doublethink’, the practice of believing in two contradictory truths – knowing them both to be false, yet cleaving to them. As in Brave New World, the plot device used is the deus ex machina – out of nowhere, a seemingly solitary soul, Winston Smith, confronts the state diametrically opposed to his own philosophy. His opposition is snared, and through a combination of torture and reasoned argument, ‘The Party’ aims to win him around to their own worldview.

Cambridge Analytica is a data analytics firm, to which many (not just the liberal left, but the company themselves) have attributed the marginal electoral victories of the Brexit campaigners, and Donald Trump. By analyzing an individual’s private data, mostly Facebook likes, Cambridge Analytica claimed to be able to group people not by demographics, but by personality traits – of which they had 253 models.

Although their precise role in the two election campaigns is unclear, such information would allow a political message to be tailored for the intended recipient. As former Cambridge Analytica director of research Christopher Wylie explained, “conscientious people like structure, so for them, a solution to immigration should be orderly, and a wall embodied that. You can create messaging that doesn’t make sense to some people but makes so much sense to other people”. With 70 likes, Cambridge Analytica would know you better than a friend; with 150 likes, a parent; and with 300, a spouse.

Cambridge Analytica shut down in May following the negative press coverage. However, those in the public and private sector that continue their practices (such as Data Propria and Emerdata) will, like Huxley and Orwell, go some way in providing a solution to the great riddle of liberalism. The genius of introducing artificial intelligence into liberal democracy is that it gives voters the sensation of liberty we so dearly want, whilst reinforcing the order we so desperately need.

Students of philosophy will undoubtedly raise their eyebrows at the idea of turning to Rousseau, the same thinker who decried man’s “chains”, to justify “the most powerful mind-control machine ever invented”. However, this shows the extent of liberal position creep over the past 250 years. Egalitarian democracy has never been a free-for-all, but a system reliant on the guidance of a deft, invisible hand.

Rousseau wrote his tract on education, Emile, to illustrate what was required of an individual looking to enter into “the social contract”. Casting himself in the star role of the tutor, Rousseau creates a world of ordered freedom and perfect legibility around his eponymous pupil. In scrupulously prepared lessons, the tutor envelops knowledge, attributing a necessity to its sequence. Emile must not know of the ideas deemed beyond his grasp, and ignorant that his knowledge is knowledge. He must also be ignorant of the true nature of his relationship with the tutor. Sound familiar?

Like the tutor Rousseau, our social media news feeds create a world of ordered freedom and perfect legibility. Ordinarily, this would not result in chaos. But in our age, since every citizen’s tutor is slightly different, and only reflects the world back at us, the subjective reality of our own doubts, desires and prejudices is made objective. As a result, we think that every other user on Twitter or Facebook who doesn’t agree with us literally lives on another planet, in an alternate reality, while we – like Winston Smith in 1984 – are alone in speaking truth to power.

The internet’s hyper-subjectivity gives us a lot of liberty, but not much order. The Google chairman Eric Schmidt has described the internet as “the largest experiment involving anarchy in history”. Unsurprisingly, Dr Kissinger saw no merit in this, despairing of the web as a “Hobbesian state of nature”. If Hobbes taught us anything, it is that civilization cannot survive when left to the chaos of the mob. As such, Kissinger did not follow his thinking to its natural conclusion: the internet in its current state is unsustainable. This ‘wild west’ has inevitably left a vacuum for a tyrant. Enter the Leviathan of Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica’s technology offers us the sensation of this hyper-subjectivity, but subtly imposes order since what we are offered is not necessarily a confirmation of our worldview, but an exhortation to our emotions. In the words of former Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, “things don’t necessarily need to be true so long as they’re believed”. The whistleblower Christopher Wylie is correct to attack his former boss with the allegation “you are creating truth”.

There is nothing wrong with this - Rousseau showed us that in a democracy, truth may be necessary, but it is a human fiction that should be of the state’s creation. Cambridge Analytica also shares a metaphysical philosophy with ‘the Party’ of 1984: reality is something that only happens in our heads. Like Big Brother, they have made the wise and able decision to use this as a means of keeping order rather than unleashing chaos.

It is often forgotten that 1984 is a feel-good story. Despite the supposed brutality of life in Oceania, Winston notes that the only way in which life has worsened for its ‘proles’, the working class who consist of 85% of the population, is beer’s measurement in litres rather than in pints. ‘The Party’ may artificially lower the standard of living, but this is to avoid an all-out conflict which would worsen it still. Besides, it is offset by the clear sense of pride and identity felt by the working class – something sorely lacking in the West today. This is shared in the book’s happy ending: “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother”. It is when Winston finally conforms that he is liberated.

The only difference between the visions of state education seen in 1984 and Emile is the greater scalability of Orwell’s proposal. Were Rousseau the tutor of all the state’s future citizens, he would be no different from Big Brother. However, the current settlement of millions of individual tutors is unsustainable. Were this to continue, Plato’s assessment of the chaos of egalitarian democracy as one of the final stages in a republic’s demise would be vindicated. Hitherto, liberal democracy in the West has not conformed to Plato’s expectations of egalitarianism. Rather, it has always necessitated a firm, invisible hand steering what Walter Lippmann dubbed the ‘bewildered herd’.

One of the most successful examples of this was Edward Bernays’ “engineering of consent” during the Cold War. This entailed the manipulation of the American population’s fears of Soviet Communnism as a means of safeguarding free market democracy. Contrary to the claims of prominent thinkers such as AC Grayling and Noam Chomsky, what Nix calls “creating truth” is not a threat to liberal democracy, but vital for its survival in the age of cyberspace.

The notion of liberal democracy’s foundation being freely acting rational beings is a dragon that must be slain. At the turn of the century, it began to usurp the stable brand of democracy which had traditionally been so successful. Perhaps Tony Blair’s time as British Prime Minister is the best example of this. His ‘continuous democracy’ resulted in policymaking based on people’s incoherent whims and desires. This precluded any greater vision of how the world could be changed for the better.

Cambridge Analytica has shown how artificial intelligence can be used to powerful ends. But used within a regulatory vacuum, where nobody can be made accountable, it turns politicians into commodities – a product sold by appealing to people’s emotions. However, this technology could be used to pacify the cyber-mob, or gain support for new policies. In any case, it will appear to be a result of the citizen’s own free thinking. As Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has explained, “whereas Google helped people find the things they already wanted to buy, Facebook would help them decide what they wanted”.

With the right’s dreams of small government and the liberal left’s fear of authority, any suggestion of power’s use as a positive force is likely to be met by shrill accusations of ‘fascism’ or ‘totalitarianism’. FDR and Roy Jenkins encountered the same problems. But now the situation is more urgent, as we are met with the options of order or destruction. As historian Niall Ferguson has pointed out, the technological revolution most resembling the internet was the invention of the printing press. It heralded 150 years of destruction before the Treaty of Westphalia brought things to a simmer.

Our situation is similar to that which Huxley was confronting when he published Brave New World in 1931. Despite its adoption as one of the canonical anti-totalitarian tracts, Huxley wrote his ‘dystopia’ with more ambivalence. The author was speaking to a Britain reeling in the wake of the Great Depression, a run on sterling, the abandoning of the gold standard, and the formation of an emergency government.The economist JM Keynes had suggested the country’s problems could only be solved by an increase in spending on public works and consumption. Huxley despised this proposal, comparing Keynes to Robespierre. This was not meant kindly.

His world teetering on the brink of chaos, Huxley was torn between an unappetizing economic solution, and an unacceptable, devastating breakdown in public order. As he wrote, “it may be that circumstances compel the humanist to resort to scientific propaganda, just as they compel the liberal to resort to dictatorship. Any form of order is better than chaos”. It is to his credit that in Brave New World, we see Huxley tacitly accept Keynes’ consumerist dictatorship against his convictions, over any sort of destruction. In the novel, everyone has security, and everyone (aside from a handful of the most extraordinary individuals) is happy. They may not be ‘free’ in the modern liberals’ sense of the word, but they consider themselves as such – they are ‘free to be happy’. Made painless by technological development, and given the later terrors of the Blitz, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima, there is nothing even mildly objectionable in Huxley’s ‘dystopia’.

Liberals would do well to study Huxley’s intellectual fortitude. When they describe Cambridge Analytica as ‘dystopian’, they’re not wrong. However, this need not be a bad thing. From Plato’s Republic to Junker’s “ever-closer union”, utopias are best identified by their blind idealism and impracticality. When Sir Thomas More coined the term in his 1516 novel Utopia, he had in mind the Greek for ‘no place’ as much as ‘good place’. One of the most lasting interpretations of the work has been its demonstration of how private property – the foundation of Elizabethan England – could not exist within the perfect commonwealth.Featuring a river whose name translates to ‘nowater’, and a protagonist whose surname means ‘dispenser of nonsent’, More was satirizing the idea of a perfect world. From the Jacobins to the Soviets, this has proven one of the deadliest jokes ever told.

Given the menacing nature of utopias, the dystopian (alternatively known as anti-utopian) label attributed to Cambridge Analytica should be welcomed. If anything, dystopias are best identified by their practicality. They aim to resolve the internal contradictions of ideologies – a welcome antidote to the blind idealism of their utopian brothers. In this respect, the worlds of Brave New World, 1984, and Cambridge Analytica are quite attractive.

Following the revelations about the NSA and the emergence of Cambridge Analytica, Western attitudes towards Chinese surveillance will have to change. Citizens in China and the West enjoy similar levels of privacy, the only difference being that in the latter, both private and public sectors are involved in snooping campaigns.

So when Western analysts lash out against Robin Li’s bold remarks about Chinese netizens’ willingness to exchange privacy for convenience, they ought to consider their own position.

Westerners are now constantly observed, but never knowing by whom or for what reason. We have joined the Chinese in the panopticon. However, contrary to the conventional view, this is not a prison. Our movements are not restricted: we can still go wherever we wish, and are no less capable of free thought. The walls will disappear from view, we will gradually become used to it, and it will be all right. Everything will be all right, the struggle will be finished. We will have won the victory over ourselves. We will love Big Brother.