In a way, everything George Orwell predicted in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has come true. In a way, nothing he predicted has come true

. ("Doublethink", he wrote, means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." The power to doublethink has come triumphantly true.)

Maybe. But what about Pac-Man? Orwell reckoned without capitalism's confounding capacity to avoid confrontation by merchandising it. Capitalism, like Pac-Man, can munch up anything. Control and conformism, the two Orwellian bugaboos, reckoned without behavioural psychology, which teaches that the most effective form of control is achieved by rewarding the organism, not by punishing it. Capitalism understands behavioursim as totalitarianism does not. In totalitarian countries, there are coups and revolutions and liberation movements. In capitalist countries, there are sales.