And they are never turned off. But we are not only watching more TV than ever before, we're watching our televisions at times and places where we never have before. Video screens are at least as ubiquitous today as they are in Orwell's novel. They are everywhere, it is argued, because we want them to be everywhere, we need them to be everywhere. We are afraid of doing even the briefest and most basic acts alone, without the warm glow of the television to keep us company.
Some people say that.
Most video screens in the year 2000 push commercialism rather than political propaganda, but there are those who say that there's not much difference between them. I'm not one of those people. But I can certainly see how one might think otherwise.