Places and forms of power

Places and forms of power

In politics and social science, power is the ability to influence people's behaviour. In order to live together members of a community accept rules, regulations, and laws. This helps to create social cohesion but can also lead to conflicts and tensions. Even when authority seems absolute, there are always counter-powers which question it, aim at limiting its excesses and resist it. To what extend can we say that dystopias have anticipated nowadays society?

1. Dystopia : fear of a controlled society

To begin, dystopia can be a fear of a controlled society. 1984 by G.Orwell written in 1949 is a famous novel in which we have a perpetual war and an omnipresent surveillance. The thought police is the main device to know who might be a danger for the Party. In dystopian novels there’s no freedom of thought, we can assimilate this to dictatorship or totalitarian regime like in North Korea. The media and the press are controlled by the government. Obviously it is just fictional in novels like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 but we must never forget that dystopia is always a review of a real world or a real country.

1. Nowadays possible abuses of power

Many cameras everywhere like in the UK with CCTV, no privacy. This can be compared with 1984. There’s paranoia from everyone. These cameras are owned by private companies but used by the government according to them for security reasons. This addiction remind us Orwell’s book. Even if they are here to protect citizens against criminal activities there’s no regulation or law about it. But these cameras can’t really prevent from crimes; they may be here to spy on people. That’s why laws must catch up and adapt with new technologies like facial recognition which is my personal document. Citizens didn’t saw the problem with all this new technologies, for them it is just easier and funnier to use. The NSA which is the most popular surveillance agency in the US uses this data and keeps them until they need to use it. The NSA is spying on American citizens by many devices like hacking, phone records or intercept your cell phone calls.

1. Counters-power as a new warning

Counter-power can be a form of power. We can take the example of E.Snowden who revealed national secret about NSA’s spying on citizens thanks to phone tapping made possible by satellite. He is a counter-power figure and whistleblower. This impacts American way of life because when all of this was revealed citizens have been afraid that anybody could use their data to do everything. I have a second example to illustrate the counter power. In Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 young citizens opposed their government thanks to internet. As a result the Egyptian government imposed a web blackout which worsened the situation, there was more and more people in the street because of their anger.

CONCLUSION

Dystopia has warned us about the danger of a controlled society but this didn’t prevent companies to do the same as in Orwell’s book for example. The Internet can have pros like bring people together but it also have cons, people can spy on us as much as they want, and they can use our data. We must never forget that we have to be careful with what we post on the social network.  

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