Huxley was right. Orwell was wrong.

Neil Postman made this argument in 1985, and it's only become more true.

We worried about censorship. About information being suppressed. About authoritarian control.

What actually happened? We drowned ourselves in entertainment. Voluntarily.

Postman's insight was subtle: the form of a medium shapes what kinds of thoughts are even possible within it. Print culture could sustain complex argument. Television restructured everything around imagery and emotional appeal.

The result? Politics became about how candidates look, not what they think. News became "now this"—disconnected fragments asking nothing of us. Every domain of public life bent toward entertainment value.

The insidious part: it doesn't feel like oppression. It feels good. That's exactly why it works.

Forty years later, we've accelerated the same dynamic with algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement. The attention economy didn't create this problem—it turbocharged something Postman already saw clearly.

His solution wasn't to reject media. It was to understand that different media have different epistemological powers. They shape what we're capable of knowing.

Awareness is the first defense.