Orwell's famous dystopia of a totalitarian England of the future. Everyone is constantly being watched and the powers-that-be keep editing all the information to make it seem like they are always right. Winston Smith is a minor ministry official who begins to question the government's authority.

The book is an interesting exploration of how a totalitarian government could work, the main requirement being total control of information. The actual story is also interesting and has some very neat twists. And, of course, there's a lot of good material to quote in discussions on freedom of speech and related matters.

The technology is charmingly quaint. It does bring to mind the question that now, with most information being on the Web, accessed only remotely, how can you prevent the server owners from changing all the old information, creating a situation similar to that in the book, but much more easily? I should probably, just to prove a point, edit this journal entry every now and then to make it say a number of different things at different times. :-p

To my shelf. Thank you