This week (Cycle) (Day 1) (Whatever) I have an infographic to share with all of you wonderful readers (which I'm sure are in the thousands by now). This incredible graphic leads me to discuss an important topic: Saving work!
If you do not Save your Work, certain problems can Arise. These problems include: Losing over 6 hours of work, having to start over, and ending with a rushed product that looks Very bad compared to the original. My apologies, at least 2/3 of these are true for this post (You be the judge?).
Anyway, Here it is!!!
So now that you've looked at the grandeur of a few icons in some circles with a background of a future city that looked Very good before I LOST EVERYTHING,
Let me explain a bit!
Basically, this infographic is meant to show how 1984 not only has the government manipulate their own people, but also demonstrates things that seemed so far off and fake at the time but are very Subtle and Real now. Because of this, I decided to use icons that we could all recognize in today's everyday news and society and connect them with the totalitarian state described in 1984.
Additionally, all are icons sorted by opacity - the most transparent are the least important - you can see right through them.
I centered the Camera because it's the most essential part of it all - Surveillance. Even now, as mentioned before, we've seen many examples of people being afraid of constant stalking, whether it's our friend Mark from FaceBook,
Or the FBI!
Not that I would know anything about that ^^
ANyway, (that got a bit out of hand)
Basically the government monitoring everyone can be put into something as simple as a camera, namely, the one on your computer (:/)
Because of the sleekness of monitoring and how crucial of a role it plays during the book, I made it opaque. The book often refers to the thought police 'vaporizing people' (refer to the last blog), and this surveillance is just a less extreme version of that. I know it doesn't exist, but it very well could, and so it might be a possibility in the (not so?) distant future.
Next Thing!
The Paper: The ministry of truth. In 1984, a place called the ministry of truth is the source of all media and is mostly fake propaganda. Ironically, our media is littered with these things and the internet is a very deceiving place that lets readers be easily scammed and tricked into believing false stories. In fact, there are various sites where a person can make fake headlines and trick others.
For example:
And worse!
Nowadays, many sources are controlling information. Is total control really that far off? hmm...
Next: The missile
The ministry of peace is a place meant to give peace and relief to citizens. However, it does the opposite and keeps them under control instead.
Right now, even the US is undergoing a 'forever war' in Afghanistan that has resulted in countless lives lost. This is obviously not as extreme as 1984, but still a possibility. The reason that it is 3rd in opacity is because it has a good amount of control over the people. The excuse of war allows the government to waste extra resources and ration out to common folk, gaining total control over them. This has been seen before in history with Stalin and other dictators, and can definitely happen again.
WWI also caused many countries to ration. This was for a good cause to their actual war effort, but if a country manipulated its people it could achieve similar conditions for the working class quite easily.
Next: The lips
The lips are a representation of NewSpeak, or the dumbed down version of English, or 'Oldspeak,' that was used in 1984 by the common people. It is an effective way to control intelligence and critical thinking. The logic behind it is, "if a person can't express themselves intelligently, they most likely will lose the ability to think intelligently as well." It seemed to work.
Funnily enough, emojis seem to be able to do this in today's culture, as well as abbreviations such as 'lol' and 'ttyl,' etc.
Finally - The flame.
The flame is reminiscent of the poor people in 1984. They live in slums and are treated like dirt, often randomly raided or killed and are not recognized as people.
This has very low opacity but is still important - It is meant to show citizens that there are still organisms with worse conditions and motivate them to keep going. By ignoring those second class humans and considering them as useless, they can be manipulated into ignoring their own predicament. It is similar to, in a way, not having an Xbox but thinking about how people on the street don't have one either.
//
So yeah! I hope you guys enjoyed my last fiction post. 1984 was a ride (reflection MB coming soon),
and I'm sorry this infograph looks so rushed, I spent way too much time on the background and not enough on the actual Information.
- P.S
Panav, I found the blog to be an interesting read. Although the infographic wasn't as complex as you would've liked it to be, I appreciate the work put into it. The simplicity of the visual makes it very easy to comprehend, which matches the informal tone of your blog. It's refreshing to have some humor in the blogs every once in a while, even if it's somewhat cringe worthy. I found the use of opacity to symbolize the importance of each element very clever, and the analysis following was concise, informative, and entertaining. Overall, I found the blog to be a nice difference to the average literary blog and helped me understand the intricacies of your novels' storyline without any prior knowledge.
ReplyDeleteYour inforgraphic itself is sleek and well designed. The palatte is nice and it's very pleasing to look at as a whole. However, the thing you were measuring in this graphic is very abstract and overall hard to measure accurately. Other than that, your reasoning was pretty solid and you explained yourself well enough. The constant interruption of memes with very little justification was a little off-putting. You even seemed to acknowledge the fact that you added too much after your FBI reference. All in all, the graphic and the explanation were good. Just dial it back on the memes (or at least give a better reason for putting them in).
ReplyDeleteI love this so much, I think that the relevancy of 1984 is sharp in cutting in this time period, and the relation expressed through your infographic is accurate. I think that the purpose of your infographic (if it's okay if I assign a purpose) is to demonstrate the relevancy, the infographic sums up the book and provides and more open perspective, but the imagery is used to express out current lives as well. I also think that the jokes sprinkled in are also very suitable satire, and although you think you lost work you made a very nice infographic.
ReplyDelete