This project originated in a desire to understand exactly how ideas circulated through society, appearing in multiple places at the same time, with seeming little to no connection to one another. This was narrowed down to focus on one of my spare-time loves, science fiction books and movies, and the fact that science fiction so often seems to reflect a dystopic version of technological fact. Of course, this was still a very large field, so I started looking for other links that interested me; I evenutally realized that in addition to science fiction and technological fact reflecting one another, they also reflected the general "stage" of society, be it modern, postmodern, or beyond.

My original plan had been to trace the concurrent development of technology, science fiction and philosophies of social construction via film, paying homage to the documentary efforts of James Burke. I quickly realized that the scope of the project would not allow me to present the material in a manner that would be most effective to exploring the concepts being discussed, and shifted to the slightly more interactive option of PowerPoint. It was at this stage that I saw that the year 1984 was a resonating nexus point of the three threads, and chose to use it as a way to explore the ideas of autopoiesis and resonance.

Unfortunately, I was ultimately as unhappy with the PowerPoint construction as I was with the idea of video. It simply did not have the flexibility or explorative abilities to do the project justice. While its ability to be packaged on CD for ease of distribution was appealing, I realized that in our current era, and with this particular subject, the only truly representative way to tackle the project was with an online presentation.

Perhaps this decision should not have been made after a sleep-error led to leaving the original PowerPoint presentation and additional data at home, with the result being my professor allowing me to turn the project in a day late, and me saying to myself "well, since I have an extra night..."

25 hours and a lot of coffee later, I begin with two questions:
Does science fiction represent future dystopic possibilities?
and
Just what happened in 1984, and why?