Looking Back in Time to See the Present - Aldous Huxley, "The Ultimate Revolution" - A 1962 Speech (Video)

This speech was presented in 1962 at Berkeley. In November 1963, Aldous Huxley died, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch/2WaUkZXKA30

During his speech, Aldous Huxley takes a further step back in time by referencing his own book, “Brave New World”, published on 1932, along with George Orwell’s book, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, published in 1949. 

Mr. Huxley speaks of the “controlling oligarchy”, and a goal “to standardize the population, to iron out inconvenient human differences, to create, to say, mass produced models of human beings arranged in some sort of scientific caste system”. Today’s sweeping censorship/surpression policy is doing just that by removing all dissenting voices from the Internet and university campuses along with other public places.

“Now, I think what is obviously perfectly clear is that for the present these techniques are not being used except in an experimental way, but I think it is important for us to realize what is happening to make ourselves acquainted with what has already happened, and then use a certain amount of imagination to extrapolate into the future the sort of things that might happen. What might happen if these fantastically powerful techniques were used by unscrupulous people in authority, what on Earth would happen, what sort of society would we get?” 

The techniques referenced by Mr. Huxley’s words included drugs and implanted devices to affect the mind and body. The revolutionary techniques spoken of in 1962 have moved far beyond anything Mr. Huxley imaged, even as visionary a thinker as he was.  

It would be twenty-one more years before the official birth of the Internet (1983), able to be accessed by one of the personal computers newly available to the public. The field of artificial intelligence (AI), long a subject for the pages of fiction,  would enter the space of reality in 1956, really takeoff starting in 2000 and become a hot discussion point today as the world looks to a technology based future. 

One further note. The civil discourse maintained during this 1962 speech is a far cry from the current disruptive and verbally confrontational behavior of attendees to campus speeches permitted today. 

Transcript of video – https://pulsemedia.org/2009/02/02/aldous-huxley-the-ultimate-revolution/