They were listening to people through their wall art.
Leon Theramin had invented a radio-activated passive microphone that was used to listen to people from their furniture [0].
The fact that this was only (as far as we know) used to listen in to embassies is more about the economics of scale rather than imagining new technology that didn't exist at the time.
At that scale at that time it was cheaper to have neighbors name and shame people who complained about the government. But there is little really in 1984 that's about the future of technology in the same way Star Trek or even Brave New Word is.
[0] He had also invented a television in the 1920s, which is mostly just trivia related to this question.
Not "just", the inspiration came from many angles: Stalinist USSR, Nazi Germany, Spanish repression of POUM, Wartime Britain (where the shape of the TVs come from) and multiple other dystopian novels.
People seems to forget that Orwell was a anti-Stalinist socialist.
I don't know too much about POUM, but my understanding was that in Homage to Catalonia he's concerned with the Spanish Communist Party's suppression of POUM. So I think that is consistent with what I said above.
I haven't forgotten that Orwell was an anti-Stalinist socialist. But there weren't any anti-Stalinist socialist states at the time.
Indeed, communist repression of socialist ideas. I think the confusion comes from "surveillance of socialist countries in", where it should have been "Stalinist countries", not "socialist countries".
The states were listening to people through their TVs in the 1940s?
They were listening to people through their wall art.
Leon Theramin had invented a radio-activated passive microphone that was used to listen to people from their furniture [0].
The fact that this was only (as far as we know) used to listen in to embassies is more about the economics of scale rather than imagining new technology that didn't exist at the time.
At that scale at that time it was cheaper to have neighbors name and shame people who complained about the government. But there is little really in 1984 that's about the future of technology in the same way Star Trek or even Brave New Word is.
[0] He had also invented a television in the 1920s, which is mostly just trivia related to this question.
Not "just", the inspiration came from many angles: Stalinist USSR, Nazi Germany, Spanish repression of POUM, Wartime Britain (where the shape of the TVs come from) and multiple other dystopian novels.
People seems to forget that Orwell was a anti-Stalinist socialist.
I don't know too much about POUM, but my understanding was that in Homage to Catalonia he's concerned with the Spanish Communist Party's suppression of POUM. So I think that is consistent with what I said above.
I haven't forgotten that Orwell was an anti-Stalinist socialist. But there weren't any anti-Stalinist socialist states at the time.
Indeed, communist repression of socialist ideas. I think the confusion comes from "surveillance of socialist countries in", where it should have been "Stalinist countries", not "socialist countries".