Brave
New World was written in the thirties of the last century. Since then there
have been seventy years of technological progress and some of Huxley’s
predictions have come true.
The most important aspect is human cloning: in Brave New World, everybody is bred in bottles instead of the maternal womb. Of course we still give birth to our children ourselves, but it is already possible (at least in theory) to breed babies in “jam-jars”, if I may call them that. And I am sure that in fifty years, we will have the possibility to design our kids – girl or boy, blue or green eyes, tall or small, intelligent or stupid, blond or black hair etc. It will may be even possible to create our own twin, if we want to. This may sound funny now, but I think that the cloning of human beings can easily be abused by dictators for example, who want to have a strong and powerful army that consists of thousands of twins who do everything that they are told, like the workers in Brave New World.
An
important aspect that has also come true are the means of transport: in Brave
New World it is possible to travel from London to Amsterdam in a few minutes,
which is still not possible at that speed, but we can already go by airplane
from London to New York in only six or seven hours. Huxley maybe thought that
this would be possible once, but when he was alive, you had to travel from
England to America by ship and that took you some days!
The
1930ies knew neon signs, I think at least in the United States, but not as many
as in the cities where Bernard and Lenina live. But we already do have lights
everywhere: everything has to be illuminated and gleams and flashes… I hope
this is all that has come true as yet and that there will be a more considerate
approach to progress, because it is enough: technology has become a bit too
potent.