The rise of the machines continues apace, and it behoves us, puny mortals that we are, to race into a mechanistic state to avoid being crushed under their metallic robo-feet. On a rare trip into the dragon’s den of R&D, June, our head of accounts, was talking to me of this syndrome of robotisation – [...]

This year Big Brother rolled out its uber-trashy all-seeing televisual eyes amidst a welter of warnings – ‘kiss goodbye to your summer’ cried everyone from Heat magazine to BB’s own increasingly cartoonish Davina McCall. There’s a grain of truth in that, at least for those of us who can’t be bothered putting up an impenetrable, [...]

Behind Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the [...]