Henry Cowles

Henry Cowles is an assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan; his specialties are the United States; Europe; Science, Technology & Medicine; Intellectual & Cultural History . He is currently finishing a book on the scientific method and starting another one on habit.

Government surveillance

Orwell knew: we willingly buy the screens that are used against us

Henry Cowles

Ann Arbor (Aeon) – Sales of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 (1949) have spiked twice recently, both times in response to political events. In early 2017, the idea of ‘alternative facts’ called to mind Winston Smith, the book’s protagonist and, as a clerk in the Ministry of Truth, a professional alternator of facts. And in […]