George Orwell’s seminal novel turns seventy-five this week. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell posed a frightening question: could people be conditioned to actually believe (rather than just pretend to believe) the lies they are told ?

Here we are 75 years later in a digital era where we are drowning in the information technologies that already do much to control our thoughts and beliefs. While simultaneously there is a terrifying resurgence of authoritarianism. The novel’s brilliant response to the threat of propaganda overload is as topical as it has ever been.

Nineteen Eighty-Four remains timeless in its message of the power of language to shape our world. George Orwell’s iconic book seems more than ever to be chilling prophecy. His dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than we could have imagined.