In an earlier draft of 1984 Orwell described the Internet but for some reason he later scratched it out.

I was amazed when I discovered this fact in Orwell's original manuscript which is reproduced in the fabulous book THE FACSIMILIE OF THE EXTANT MANUSCRIPT OF NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR which I bought last summer in Hay-on-Wye, Wales.

Here's the pertinent passage from the draft version of 1984 wherein Syme is explaining his Newspeak job to Winston:

"...The great wastage is in verbs and adjectives. My job is the adjectives. Of course you realize that I'm only one of thousands - tens of thousands. Every day I talk over the telescreen with people in Melbourne and Durban and Washington. The whole thing is a miracle of co-ordination. They say that not a single word goes into the Dictionary until Big Brother has passed it personally..."

To see this in its fuller context click the graphic below which is a photo of the pertinent page of Orwell's working draft:

The typed portion of the above page came from the second draft of 1984 which was typed by Orwell himself in August 1947. The scratch-outs and inserts in blue ink are Orwell's own handwriting done during the final edit on Jura in 1948. By that time he was very ill and was editing and writing the book in bed.

To see a reproduction of the above excerpt (for those who have trouble reading Orwell's writing) click below to see how Peter Davison has transcribed it in page 74 of THE FACSIMILIE:

To read the final version of that passage, as it appeared when 1984 was published in 1949, go to 18.Newspeak.

My thanks go to the reader who commented that "Orwell did not foresee the spread of information through such things as the Internet" because his email prompted me to bring the "talking on telescreen" fact to the attention of Orwell Today readers, something I've been meaning to do since discovering it in the manuscript last summer.

GULLIVER DESCRIBES ARTIFICIAL LEARNING (most ignorant person may write books)