I’ll file this under literary questions.
What is our society, US society specifically, going to end up ultimately as? George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World ? Because they’re both supposedly models of dystopian. But Huxley’s is more positive. I rather would prefer that outcome, in any event.
And as a separate question, which outcome are we headed too under the present circumstances? Give ample room for your explanation (no one likes short answers 
).
Thank you in advance !
Neither. They are fiction.
Without fighting the hypothetical, the way science is rejected for political reasons in the world I live in, Brave New World is right out.
Some of each. For a long long time we’ve more closely resembled BNW, wherein the social control is accomplished via manipulation and socialization, and people believe themselves to be free when their choices have actually been severely constrained and the human activities meaningless. But we have real coercion and late events and phenomena seem to be moving in that direction, with overt authoritarian Big Brotherly threats to worry about.
The scary thing about Brave New World is, Mustapha Mond is a nice guy. He sincerely believes that he can run your life better than you can. (And, judged by the standards of his own culture, he is right.)
I don’t see many politicians who aspire to be Big Brother. I see a lot who think they are Mustapha Mond.
The ‘1984’ conceit that every aspect of our lives is closely monitored and tracked, to the point that it’s known what we’re thinking, has largely come true; only it’s by and for businesses trying to sell us something, not the government.
Despite the RW/Evangelical yammering about “Mark of the Beast,” I have a feeling elements of This Perfect Day are in humanity’s future.
Don’t thank me, thank Uni.
ETA: ninja’d (to an extent) by soloist.
I think the general landscape and life choices presented in Bladerunner (the movie) are looking pretty likely. A gradual downward slide for most people, an environment broken and ugly, with a few at the very top able to rise above all that. Or perhaps Elysium, with a similar theme only the elite few are even further above the huddled masses. Neither of those is much like the classics in the OP.
OTOH we’ve all known plenty of politicians, civil bureaucrats and corporate managers who have no qualms about being O’Brien. They may accept that at any time they could potentially go down themselves, but they figure they might as well be on the side of power while they can, even if just in the role of the boot.
And let’s remember 1984 is not only about surveillance but about a system of directed, manufactured mob hate at some “other” who is cast as the villain, of a state of unending “War On [whoever and whatever]” taking resources away from human needs, of factual information sent down the memory hole so what the ruler said last year now he never said and always had said the contrary and the people who were good a year ago now never were anything but bad.
Ehh, if that’s the situation, they’re doing very poorly in my case. I was getting advertisements about custom private jet interiors all summer. I don’t even own an ultralight.
As I type this, I’m being pitched on the business school of an out-of-state university I have no interest in attending, and — a Yahtzee app?
Hang on; are they just absurdly bad at this?
I’m really not certain.
In their defense, the advertisers are just looking for something more targeted than taking an ad out in some magazine that’s tangentially related to their product. I’m sure someone who owns a private jet but is dissatisfied with their interior shares an interest or two with me, I just can’t see how I ended up in the targeted group.
On the other hand, I can’t think of too much that they get right other than the obvious. I get music related ads when I’m watching/browsing music related content, and not in other places. Every once in awhile I’ll get a B&H ad when I’m not browsing something related to music/photography. But I already do a reasonable amount of business with them, so they’re not really committing any great feats there.
“B&H”? Benson and Hedges?
Hehehe, no. B&H Photo Video
Both… “Brave New World” in a way, because power realized jackboots weren’t going to work, but “1984” because language has been subverted (liberal/conservative, for example) and the acquiescence of power, because they think “Oh, it’s my President who runs the CIA” (laughable and false). I’ve seen both political parties do switch-a-roos, the silly litmus tests, guilt by association.
One point that strikes me about 1984 is that it’s the only, or perhaps one of two (Plato’s Republic being the other), dystopian fiction I know of where the brutal oppression is the whole point. Most dystopias (including Brave New World) are failed attempts at utopias, and some are meant to be good for the privileged, with the underprivileged suffering just because the privileged just don’t care about them at all. But 1984 has explicit sadism, not just indifference.
“Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
It can’t happen here.
In the actual year 1984, there was a fair amount written on the subject. The one that stuck with me (I unfortunately don’t remember either the author or the publication) was an article pointing out that Orwell had posited a world in which everybody had a TV in their rooms which watched them, and told them what to do.
In the actual 1984 nearly everybody had a TV in their rooms which we watched, and which told us what to do.
There might not, said the author, be as much difference between those two scenarios as we liked to think.
(These days, the TV/computer/phone screen and the people watch each other.)
Having said that – the answer to the OP is pretty obviously Neither Of The Above. Not only are there hundreds of other posited fictional futures, but the future is highly unlikely to be what you – any “you” – expected it to be.