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Check out: Superbowl 1984 Ad: Apple MacIntosh

from,
Gene

Greetings Gene,

How coincidental that I read your email just after I answered a question about "1984" prophecies relate to the 1980s where I recalled that it was in the 80s that Apple computer started replacing typewriters in offices thus further introducing "telescreens" into our lives. See HOW ORWELL NAMED 1984.

Watching that video you just sent reinforces my remembrance of that first experience with computers, although I never did see that ad. Even if I'd seen it then I wouldn't have understood the Orwellian connotations, as I do now. Thanks for sending it along.

All the best,
Jackie Jura

PS - The Orwellian Super Bowl Ad that aired on January 22, 1984 not only ran on the 36th anniversary of the publication of 1984 (in 1948) -- it also ran the day after the 34th anniversary of the day Orwell died on January 21, 1950

Why Apple's 1984 ad ran only once (Apple's commercial in the 1984 Super Bowl is one of the most famous of all time. Not bad for a commercial that only ran one time. It's a take off on George Orwell's 1984 and features a jogger (okay, maybe that part's not so Orwellian) smashing a screen displaying a Big Brother like figure who is supposed to represent Windows. It was directed by Ridley Scott, who had recently made Blade Runner and it had that same dystopian vibe...)

1984 TELESCREENS & MICROPHONES Following are a selection of passages from "1984" describing how Big Brother's thought police used the telescreen (TV and computer screens with a camera and microphone imbedded) to watch and listen to everything Winston Smith, and all other citizens of England and the rest of the world, said or did. ~ Jackie Jura

END OF CENTURY 1984

ORWELL BIT 1984 APPLE TV AD

ORWELL COPYRIGHT COURT CASES

2 + 2 = 1984 EXPOSURE

APPLE'S 1984 SUPERBOWL 1984 AD

HOW ORWELL NAMED 1984

GEORGE ORWELL'S PEN NAME

WINSTON DIARY BEGAN APRIL 4

VISITING ORWELL'S WEDDING CHURCH (...And there on the right, in all its glory, is St. Mary's Church where on Tuesday, June 9th, 1936, Eric Arthur Blair married Eileen Maud O'Shaughnessy. He was 33 and she was 30. Godcidently, it was almost exactly thirteen years later, on June 8, 1949, that "1984" was published... Eileen died on March 29th, 1945, and was buried on April 3, 1945. No doubt, in cryptic remembrance of her, Orwell had Winston Smith, the hero of "1984", begin his diary on April 4th....)