Dystopia and Assimilation Anonymous

In the year 632AF (the year 2540AD, 632 years after Ford) the world has finally eliminated many inconveniences including war, famine, dissent, disease, depression and jealousy. This conquest, however, came at a cost: cultural assimilation, consumerism, and mediocrity. In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a dystopia where amazing scientific progress has created a culture that cannot live with the values and governments accepted today. "Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of the governing World State. In this time, unquestioned political authority controls culture through the manipulation of available technologies.

Science plays a commanding role in Huxley's World-State, as the people are conditioned to believe, "science is everything." Factories produce everything, from babies to drugs, making science a dehumanizing force. Technology is used to facilitate everything, even to create, control, and end every life. The novel addresses the effects of advances in technology on society. Huxley's dystopia illustrates the dangers of technology, more obviously in his New World than he could in his own, particularly the abuse of sciences like biology and psychology and scientific...