Freedom of excess

‘Newspeak’ is the name for the ideal language in George Orwell’s surveillance state. It is meant to supplant ‘oldspeak’ entirely. Newspeak has only one goal: torestrict room for thinking freely. Every year, words decrease in number, and the space for conscious thought diminishes. Syme, a friend of 1984’s hero Winston, raves about the beauty of destroying words. ‘Thoughtcrimes’,
he enthuses, will be made impossible when the words necessary for them are struck from the lexicon. In the process, the notion of freedom will be abolished too. On this score, Orwell’s surveillance state differs fundamentally from the world of the digital panopticon - which
uses freedom to excess. Today’s society of information is not characterized by destroying words, but by multiplying them without end.