Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society
Our Brave New World Today
Richard Stivers1
Abstract
Aldous Huxley is perhaps the only author to have written a work of science fiction and a work of nonfiction to ascertain
whether fiction had become reality. Both Brave New World (fiction) and Brave New World Revisited (nonfiction) are discussed
and compared with Jacques Elluls work on technology.
Keywords
technology, human technique, utopia, freedom, happiness, efficiency, totalitarianism
What does science fiction at its best reveal about our scientific
and technological present, and moreover is it prophetic about
the future? These are perennial questions. To these must be
added Jacques Elluls (1980, p. 112) observation that science
fiction is a compensation for a reality even bleaker than that
presented in literature. As such science fiction helps us adapt
to a world that is better only by comparison. Let us examine
Aldous Huxleys fictional Brave New World (written in 1931,
published in 1932) and his nonfictional Brave New World
Revisited (1958) as a way of providing a partial answer to
questions about the significance of science fiction.
Brave New World was published in 1932; Brave New World
Revisited in 1958. This is the only example that I am aware
of in which an author later evaluates in a nonfiction work what
he had earlier presented in fictional terms. In other words, he
asks how Brave New World stands up 26 years later? We will
ask how both his fictional and nonfictional accounts fit our
world today. Perhaps in answering this question, we will better
understand the significance of science fiction.
Aldous Huxleys Brave New World (1946) and George
Orwells 1984 (1949) are arguably the two most important
works of science fiction in the 20th century. And yet they
couldnt be more different. Orwells world is that of political
totalitarianismNazism, Fascism, Stalinismwhich inspired
his narrative. Orwells brilliance is most obvious in his depic-
tion of the totalitarian attack on books and language.
Huxleys world is not that of a police state able to punish
almost any discretion and extinguish any semblance of privacy.
His is a world of pleasurable reward for conformitya world
of therapy and manipulation instead of punishment and threat.
Huxley portrays a totalitarian society that is based on scientific
technique rather than politics, or more precisely, a politics that
is determined by technique. Technological totalitarianism has
superseded political totalitarianism.
Huxleys concern was freedom in the face of universal
applied science (technique) used on humans. Orwells para-
mount concern as well was freedom, which could be restored
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30(4) 247251
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by political radicalism. Huxleys narrative is less hopeful
because science and technology appear to be neutral and thus
more difficult to mount an attack against.
In his 1958 Brave New World Revisited, Huxley maintained
that his forecasts in Brave New World had come to fruition
much sooner than he had anticipated. Huxley was instrumental
in getting Jacques Elluls 1954 book on technology translated
into English. More than likely Elluls The Technological Society
(1964) influenced Huxleys Brave New World Revisited (1958).
I will employ Elluls work on technology as the standard for
understanding techniques impact on society. But first let
us examine Brave New World (1946) and Brave New World
Revisited (1958).
Brave New World (1931)
In the foreword to the 1946 edition of Brave New World,
Huxley stated that inefficiency is the sin against the Holy
Spirit (p. xii) in a technological society, in other words, the
unpardonable offense. Efficiency is required in all areas in
lifeboth in regard to nature and to humans. Huxley under-
stood what relatively few observers have that technology is
both material and nonmaterial. Indeed it is necessary that
humans be brought into conformity with the movement of a
technological civilization through the application of psycho-
logical and organizational techniques. The world-wide utopia
of Brave New World (1946) is governed by human techniques
(both material and nonmaterial).
Genetic engineering created a human caste system: Alphas,
Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. The most intelligent
1
Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA
Corresponding Author:
Richard Stivers, Department of Sociology and Anthropology,
Illinois State University, Campus Box 4660, Schroeder Hall 332,
Normal, IL 61790-4660, USA
Email: slfoile@ilstu.edu
248 Bulletin of Science, T echnology & Society 30(4)
type, Alphas, were engineered for the top leadership positions,
whereas the Gammas for the most pedestrian jobs. The remain-
ing types were programmed for increasingly less intellectual
tasks as one moves from Betas to Gammas to Deltas. In Brave
New World (1946) pregnancy was mechanized thereby elimi-
nating motherhood. The government controlled population at
two billion worldwide. The ultimate material technique of human
control was soma, a drug that produced a mystical euphoria
and temporarily eliminated ambition and pride. A smaller dose
of soma made one blissful, a larger does led to pleasurable
hallucinations, and a maximum dose resulted in a deep and
refreshing sleep. The drug had no negative side effects. It was
the perfect techniquea political form of control that was
simultaneously desired by the citizens.
Forced consumption was both a material and nonmaterial
technique, for it depended on both technological objects and
services and on the psychological techniques of hypnopaedia
and propaganda. The former includes both sleep conditioning
and suggestion during hypnosis. Given that children were
socialized in government-run camps, hypnopaedia was readily
practiced. But even more important was propaganda, which
included both political propaganda and advertising. In a totali-
tarian system the two forms of propaganda merge. The inhabit-
ants of Huxleys world were continuously bombarded with
propaganda; there was no reprieve.
Propaganda stifles critical reflection as does its complement
the peer group. No one was permitted to be an individualit
was a taboo. Everyone was made part of a therapeutic group,
which included chanting and the worship of Ford, the founder
of the world government. Just as there was forced consumerism
there was forced sociability. Everyone had been conditioned to
look for signs of nonconformity. Privacy was an anachronism.
The peer group was supreme in the absence of marriage and
the family. But romantic relationships were censored: You
were denied an exclusive sexual relationship. And friendships
could not be close.
In the absence of intense ethical relationships, passion lay
dormant. Soren Kierkegaard (1962) argued that passion follows
from the exercise of moral authority. For example, the reciprocal
demands of father and son create strong emotionsadmiration,
love, hatred, fear. In Huxleys world all relationships were char-
acterized by shallow and transitory feelings. This of course is
why the government banned marriage, family, and friendship.
Moreover, morality and religion (except for the worship of
Ford) had been eliminated. Government destroyed any institu-
tion that might compete for the citizens allegiance.
Even culture could not be permitted: No traditions or old
books were allowed; only technical knowledge and factual
information were in print. Replacing a complex culture that
assisted people in confronting suffering and death and explor-
ing the meaning of existence was a culture of happiness. But
happiness was a jealous value; it permitted no others. It did so
by redefining other values as simply expressions of itself. For
instance, freedom was only another name for happiness.
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The malcontent Bernard says, Dont you wish you were
free, Lenina?
I dont know what you mean. I am free. Free to have
the most wonderful time. Everybodys happy nowadays.
(Huxley, p. 61)
In Brave New World (1946) Huxley gives us a story of a
world utopia that forces people to be happy through various
scientific techniques of manipulation and control. It is a world
of control in and through pleasure. Real freedom is abandoned
for it invariably brings conflict, anxiety, and suffering. This
technological totalitarianism has a happy face.
Brave New World Revisited (1958)
Twenty-seven years later, Huxley (1958) examined the mod-
ern world in terms of his earlier novel, and was shocked to
discover that fiction was becoming reality much sooner than
he had originally anticipated. Brave New World Revisited
(1958) is a sociological portrait of modern societies. Chap-
ters include a discussion of overpopulation, overorganiza-
tion, chemical manipulation (pharmaceuticals), propaganda,
advertising, hypnopaedia, subliminal perception, and brain-
washing. Most of these topics were dramatically portrayed
in the novel.
Of special note are his chapters on propaganda in a democ-
racy and overorganization. Huxley contrasts the irrational
propaganda of a dictatorship with the rational propaganda of
a democracy based on the enlightened self-interest of both
leader and citizen. The mass communications industry threat-
ens democracy by providing a plethora of distractions that are
symbolically related to desires and fears. Therefore, the mass
communications industry is not concerned with truth and false-
hood but with possible imaginary realities. Democratic citizens
thus have increasingly unrealistic expectations and embrace
illusion. Huxley is aware that advertising and the mass media
threaten a democracy as much as authoritarian control.
By overorganization he means the quest for absolute effi-
ciency and perfect order in big government and big business
and the resultant emphasis on conformity. Technology is first
and foremost about the rational organization of things and
peoplemachines, bureaucracy, computers. Huxley (1958)
puts it this way:
During the past century the successive advances in tech-
nology have been accompanied by corresponding
advances in organization. Complicated machinery has
had to be matched by complicated social arrangements,
designed to work as smoothly and efficiently as the new
instruments of production. In order to fit into these orga-
nizations, individuals have had to deny their native
diversity and conform to a standard pattern, have had
to do their best to become automata. (p. 25)
Stivers 249
Modern societies of 1958 therefore closely resemble the
social world of Brave New World (1946) with several notable
exceptions. First, there is no World Utopia ruled by World
Controllers. Second, there is no caste system created by genetic
engineering. But are these really the most important compo-
nents of technological totalitarianism anyway? When psycho-
logical and managerial techniques are perfected, totalitarianism
can still be achieved.
At the end of Brave New world Revisited, Huxley returns
to freedom, his main theme:
Meanwhile there is still some freedom left in the world.
Many young people, it is true, do not seem to value
freedom. But some of us still believe that, without free-
dom, human beings cannot become fully human and
that freedom is therefore supremely valuable. Perhaps
the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to
be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do what-
ever we can to resist them. (1958, p. 143)
Despite his urging, there is almost a sigh of resignation in
Huxleys final paragraph.
Jacques Elluls Sociology of Technology
We now turn to Jacques Elluls work on technology as a way
of evaluating what Huxley got right and what he omitted.
One of Elluls critical insights is that technology involves
more than material technology (such as machines); it includes
nonmaterial techniques, which are either organizational or
psychological, or both. Bureaucracy is an example of the for-
mer, whereas advertising and public relations are example of
the latter (Ellul, 1964).
Technology increasingly dominates every form of human
activity. In the West, technological innovations were integrated
into the extant culture until the 19th century; that is, such inno-
vations were situated in aesthetical, ethical, and religious rela-
tionships with other cultural artifacts and means of acting upon
nature. Moreover, there were numerous limitations placed on
the use of technology, both within and between societies.
The upshot of this is that prior to the 19th century technol-
ogy was simply one aspect of a culture. This began to change
when scientific and technological advances, and the con-
comitant myth of progress, swept across Europe and North
America in the 19th century. Science and technology were
inexorably linked; indeed, technology as applied science
became the justification for science. The incredible efflores-
cence of technological inventions bedazzled leaders and fol-
lowers alike; consequently, technology became an end in itself,
the purpose of civilization. As an end in itself, technology is
simultaneously the most powerful means employed in the ser-
vice of efficacy and efficiency. This desire to push technology
as fast and as far as it will go demonstrates that technology, while
a rational construction, is ultimately driven by the irrational
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will to power, the will to control, dominate, and exploit. Its
material development was accompanied by its spiritualization.
Technology was made sacred, and the sacred is that which is
tacitly perceived to be of absolute power and absolute value
(Ellul, 1975). The domination was now complete: Technology
was an uncontested material and spiritual power.
Technology becomes a system because we have looked for
multiple users of the same technology, for example, laser tech-
nology, and have attempted to coordinate disparate technologies
in the interest of efficiency. Technology is an open system in
that it interacts with its two environmentsnature and human
societybut it is not open in that it does not possess genuine
feedback. What finally allows technology to become an open
system is the widespread use of the computer. The computer
allows each technique to become a source of information for
the coordination of the various technologies. Technology is a
system, then, at the level of information. This means, however,
that each subsystem loses some of its flexibility, for its courses
of action must be adjusted to the needs of the other subsystems.
The mutual interaction and mutual dependency of subsystems
made possible by the computer is the technological system. In
large urban areas the various technological subsystems such
as communication, transportation, law enforcement, and com-
merce become more dependent on one another for the smooth
operation of the overall urban system.
Although the technological system is an open system, it is
more or less autonomous in relation to its human environment.
The problem is that the technological system allows for no
effective feedback, that is, self-regulation. Feedback means
that a system (for instance, an ecological system) has the abil-
ity to correct the problem at its source. For example, if the
technological system possessed feedback, then the use of the
automobile, a major cause of air pollution, would be eliminated
or severely curtailed. Instead, we attempt to discover ways of
countering the negative effects of the automobile on the envi-
ronment. We attempt to correct the problem after the fact so
that we can have it both waysdrive our cars as much as we
like and have a clean environment. Only humans, however,
can provide feedback for the technological system. But because
of our supreme faith in technology and because of our belief
that technology itself can solve all problems, we do not per-
ceive the need to provide such feedback.
Even if we attempt to use the computer as a feedback mecha-
nism, it can only handle quantitative data. Hence, the computer
rules out the possibility of evaluating the impact of technology
on the qualitative side of life: How does technology affect
culture and the human psyche? The ability of technology to
create an efficient order at the societal level is offset by its
disordering impact on culture and personality. The computer,
however, is constitutionally unable to make such an historical
and cultural interpretation (Ellul, 1980).
Technologys near-total domination (it affects us more than
we affect it) is exemplified by the fact today everything tends
to be an imitation of technology and/or a compensation for
250 Bulletin of Science, T echnology & Society 30(4)
its impact. Imitation of technology is nowhere more evident
than in the glut of how to books and techniques for relating
to others. How to raise children, how to climb the ladder of
success, how to manipulate ones boss, how to be popular, how
to be happythe list is unending. We cant help reducing every-
thing to a technique, for technology deconstructs and supplants
a common culture including common sense. As a consequence,
almost everything today has to be learned as a technique. This
is the paramount reason schools are forced to teach life skills.
Everything from babysitting to getting along with ones peers
has to be learned as a formalized (technical) skill.
Technology creates the need for compensatory mechanisms
in large part because of its impact on cultural meaning and the
individual (Ellul, 2004, pp. 38-45). In traditional societies,
practical knowledge was embedded in social institutions, which
together formed the basis of a culture. Institutions contained
what have been termed symbolically mediated experiences.
Technology supplants experience and deconstructs common
meaning. Cultural meaning, whether ethical or aesthetical, is
now fragmented. This creates a desperate search for meaning,
as with the proliferation of new religious groups and cults, or
with the multiplication of business ethics, medical ethics, and
so forth. Moreover, because there is an inverse relationship
between power and values, technology, which today is exclu-
sively about powerefficiency and efficacyturns power
itself into a value. Technology permits morality only insofar
as it is reduced to ideology.
One of Elluls (1980) most profound insights is that technol-
ogy is concurrently the chief organizing force in modern society
and its fundamental disorganizing force. Technology supplants
institutions and morality. At the same time, however, it leads
to cultural and psychological fragmentation. We look to tech-
nology to repair the damage done to environment, culture, and
psyche. The technological system, Ellul explains, creates and
elaborates means of facilitation, adjustment, and compensation.
Clearly humans make efforts to repair the damage technology
does to the environment. For example, we recognize the need
to reduce the release of greenhouse gases. Less obvious are the
varied attempts to help humans adjust to the demands of tech-
nology. The mental health industry, including self-help groups,
and the pharmaceutical industry play a key role here. As part
of an overall adjustment, technology provides a plethora of
compensations: mass media entertainment and consumerism
of every sort. Consumerism and entertainment are our compen-
sations for the increasing control technology exercises over us.
The only important conformity today is conformity to technol-
ogy. This is why the technological system can tolerate diverse
lifestyles, moralities, cults, and other cultural expressionsthey
do not threaten the advancement of the system (Ellul, 1980).
Yet the technological system is out of control despite all
the efforts at repair, facilitation, adjustment, and compensation.
For it lacks true feedback. At most we can reject those tech-
nological choices that are obviously too risky economically,
but we continue to wager our future on technological progress
that makes life more dangerous and unpredictable.
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What Huxley Got Right
In both Brave New World (1946) and Brave New World Revis-
ited (1958), Huxley understood perfectly well that efficiency,
order, and conformity are the paramount concerns in a tech-
nological civilization. Then too he brilliantly described how
techniques for the manipulation and control of humans were
to be the means to achieve this. Manipulation and control, he
demonstrated, would center on the human desire for happiness
(reduced to pleasure).
Drugs, consumerism, and absorption into the peer group
were to be the chief means of achieving a permanent state of
bliss. In his recent book Artificial Happiness (2006), Ronald
Dworkin demonstrates how psychotropic drugs, exercise and
dieting, alternative medicine, and spirituality are often used to
achieve a temporary state of happiness that is hollow because
it is not earned. By this he means that real happiness results
from achievements, most notably from moral commitment and
responsibility to others, which were absent in Brave New World.
Huxley understood the growing demand for conformity,
that is, team players, despite all the rhetoric about diversity.
This necessarily involves the loss of freedom and individuality.
In a stroke of genius he perceived that freedom would be
redefined as happiness.
What Huxley Missed
Huxley did not have a concept of technology as a system. In
Brave New World (1946), the various technologies are coor-
dinated by the World Controllers. Therefore technological
power is still principally in the hands of humans, not the tech-
nological system. He did not understand just how abstract
power had become. The political and economic elite have
greater access to technology, but the ultimate power resides
in the technological system.
Equally important is his failure to recognize that the techno-
logical system leads to irrational attacks on the system. The more
rational and controlling society becomes, the greater the need
to escape the social order in distractions, compensations, or
misplaced revolt. Huxley (1946, p. xiii), knew that the so-called
sexual revolution was not going against traditional morality, but
was a rebellion against the technological order. The sexual revo-
lution only leads to an even greater technological control of
sexuality, such as the reduction of sex to technical performance.
Nevertheless, Huxley failed to understand that not all compensa-
tions were only permitted and encouraged. Elluls insight is that
the technological system indirectly produces spontaneous
attacks on the system without really threatening it.
Finally, Huxley missed the technological transformation of
social institutions. In Brave New World, marriage, the family,
morality, and religion disappear. In a technological civiliza-
tion, however, social institutions remain intact in form, but
their content is radically altered. In traditional societies, social
institutions were based on experiences that were given symbolic
meaning. Technology supplants experience and fragments and
Stivers 251
sterilizes symbolic meaning. Raising children, for example, is
increasingly a technical activity dictated by experts.
Criticism notwithstanding, Huxleys two books constitute
a remarkable achievement, especially in light of how early (1931)
he grasped the overweening importance of technology in the
modern world. These two books command reflection on the
nature and value of science fiction.
For at least two centuries writers and artists have debated the
purpose of art and literature. For some the purpose is purely
aesthetical; it is imaginative possibility. The artist or writer should
be free to do whatever fulfills his or her creative urge. For others
art and literature should have a moral purpose; it should criticize
reality when it has abandoned its moral purpose.
Huxley already understood the major ideas of Brave New
World Revisited (1958) when he wrote Brave New World in
1931. The latter work, a dystopia, was intended to alert readers
to a real dangerthe erosion of freedom. Most other science
fiction writers, fascinated by technology, explore aesthetical
possibility without much serious reflection on the nature of
modern society. When science fiction is only about the future
possibility of technology, it then can readily serve as compen-
sation for a bleak reality. Moreover, it can make even a bleak
future pleasurable at the moment. Ellul is undoubtedly right
about this kind of science fiction. Because Huxleys science
fiction serves a moral purpose and is grounded in an accurate
critique of the modern world, it is an exception to the com-
pensatory nature of most science fiction.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the
authorship and/or publication of this article.
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Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or
authorship of this article.
References
Dworkin, R. (2006). Artificial happiness. New York, NY: Carroll
& Graf.
Ellul, J. (1964). The technological society (J. Wilkinson, Trans.).
New York, NY: Knopf.
Ellul, J. (1975). The new demons (C. Hopkin, Trans.). New York,
NY: Seabury.
Ellul, J. (1980). The technological system (J. Neugroschel, Trans.).
New York, NY: Continuum.
Ellul, J. (2004). Perspectives on our age (W. Vanderburg, Trans.).
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: House of Anansi Press.
Huxley, A. (1946). Brave new world (Rev. ed.). New York, NY:
Harper & Row.
Huxley, A. (1958). Brave new world revisited. New York, NY:
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Kierkegaard, S. (1962). The present age (A. Dru, Trans.). New York,
NY: Harper & Row.
Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. New York, NY: New American Library.
Bio
Richard Stivers is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Depart-
ment of Sociology and Anthropology at Illinois State University.
He has written a number of books on technology, including The
Culture of Cynicism, Technology as Magic, Shades of Loneliness,
and The Illusion of Freedom and Equality.