Flawed Typefaces
What constitutes a flawed typeface? For this article it is defined as a typeface that is perfectly fine—except for one nagging aspect, usually a single character. A flawed typeface is one that either you avoid using entirely because of this lone defect; or one that you use sparingly—and only then, after some alteration of either your design or the face itself to ameliorate the “flaw”. Flawed typefaces are not bad or even mediocre. The whole premise here is that they are good, perhaps even classic or wildly popular. And yet there is a single character that ruins them or, at the very least, causes one to pause before specing them. This article attempts to explain the flaws in 23 fonts: what they are, why they matter, and what to do about them. Disclaimer: these are opinions, not facts. Ultimately, flaws are in the eye of the beholder.
Goudy Oldstyle (Frederic W. Goudy, American Type Founders, 1916)
American Type Founders altered Frederic W. Goudy’s design to fit its common line, a measurement instituted to insure that all of its typefaces could be aligned with each other. Most of the descenders survived the abuse, but not the g. In the digital world there is no reason why Goudy Oldstyle cannot be restored to its proper look.
Goudy Oldstyle compared to Adobe Garamond Pro.
Goudy Oldstyle detail from 1923 ATF Type Specimen.
Bembo (Monotype Corporation, 1929; based on the 1495 roman type of Francesco Griffo)
The hot metal version of Bembo came with two versions of R, one with a short leg intended for text composition and the other with an elegantly extended leg intended for titling purposes. Unfortunately, in the phototype era the second R was the only one available and that situation continued with the PostScript version of Bembo. Both Rs are once again available with Bembo Book Pro. Unfortunately, the long-legged R remains the default character.
Top line: Bembo, Bembo Book MT Pro and Bembo Book MT Pro with alternate R; Bottom line: FF Quadraat and FF Quadraat kerned
Detail of De Aetna (1495) typeface by Francesco Griffo. The model for Bembo.
FF Quadraat (Fred Smeijers, FontShop, 1992)
FF Quadraat is another font with a problematic R. Its leg sticks out a bit less than Bembo’s but it also dips noticeably below the baseline. It spaces poorly and creates a visible tic in a block of text.Centaur (Bruce Rogers, private 1914; Monotype Corporation, 1929; based on the type of Nicolas Jenson, 1470)
The R in Centaur also has a leg that juts out, but the flawed letter is the odd j with its dirk-like wiggle. This letter is a Bruce Rogers invention since Nicolas Jenson did not have a j in his typeface. Presumably, the wiggle was added to keep the j from having to be kerned. It is distracting in text, beguiling in headings and logos (see john varvatos).
Centaur MT Std compared to Adobe Garamond Pro; both kerned.
DTL Dorian (Elmo van Slingerland, Dutch Type Library, 1996)
DTL Dorian, a font that I recently included in my column on underappreciated fonts, is afflicted with a bothersome S and s. The top curve ends in a bracketed serif while the bottom curves simply curls up, giving both letters a top-heavy look. They don’t fit in easily with other round letters, either.
DTL Dorian T compared to Adobe Garamond Pro; both kerned.
Optimo Didot the Elder (François Rappo, Optimo, 2004; based on an 1819 type cut by Vibert for Pierre Didot)
Didot the Elder is full of weird—yet historically accurate—characters: C, G, S and s with arrow serifs; f with a “serif” on its crossbar; y with a bent descender; and g with a seriffed open loop. Most of these are fun. But the g is annoying in a lengthy text. Unfortunately, there is no normal alternate available.
Optimo Didot the Elder compared to Linotype Didot.
detail of page from 1819 type specimen by Pierre Didot; type cut by Vibert
Sabon (Jan Tschichold, Stempel, Linotype and Monotype, 1967; based on the types of Claude Garamont) and Sabon Next (Jean François Porchez, Linotype Library, 2003)
Sabon, one of the most beloved typefaces of the 20th century, was originally designed for three technologies: foundry, Linotype and Monotype. When it was adapted to film and subesequently to digital it was the Linotype design that was carried forward. This meant that the italic was compromised since the linotype version was duplexed. Thus the italic is wider than normal. This dismays many people, but it might be acceptable if it were not for the nearly round o. The solution is to use Sabon Next Italic instead.http://www.bauertypes.com/arxiu/Pdfs/s/sabon_next_specimen.pdf
However, Sabon Next is not beloved by fans of Sabon. Not only did Porchez go back to the foundry version of Sabon, but he went beyond it to the typefaces of Garamond and Le Bé which Tschichold was using as models. And then he went even further and added alternate characters (some reprising those of the original Sabon, others more fanciful), swash characters and quaint ligatures. To many, the result is a typeface that seems more Adobe Garamond than Sabon. But, on its own terms Sabon Next is a fine face—except for the alternate q. This is a capital form (common in Renaissance calligraphy) that looks totally out of place, especially with its too short tail that looks shriveled up from embarrassment. But it’s an alternate character and can be easily ignored.
Top line: Sabon Next LT with alternate q and Sabon Next LT; Bottom line: Sabon Italic compared to Sabon Next LT Italic all kerned
CC Galliard (Matthew Carter, Carter & Cone Type, 1992) and ITC Galliard (Matthew Carter, International Typeface Corporation, 1978; based on the types of Robert Granjon)
As admired as ITC Galliard has been from the outset, its aggressive italic has not always found favor, especially the pelican-jawed g. Anticipating this, Matthew Carter designed an alternate g for such people, but when the International Typeface Corporation took the font over from Mergenthaler Linotype, it was set aside, along with other additional characters. These characters were all returned to the font when Carter re-released Galliard (the regular weight only) through Carter & Cone Type. I am not one of those who disliked the pelican-jawed g, but I am happy to have the alternate g as well.
Top line: CC Galliard italic compared to CC Galliard Italic with alternate g; Bottom line: Adobe Garamond Italic for comparison all kerned
Comenius Italic (Hermann Zapf, Berthold GmbH, 1976)
In both kurrentschrift and English roundhand the w is often made in the form of an n joined to a u. This form is usually dropped from modern typefaces—compare Matthew Carter’s Snell Roundhand to the sample alphabet by Charles Snell—but an exception is Comenius Italic by Hermann Zapf. Although Zapf has redesigned the character at least once since the typeface’s debut, the w still looks peculiar to modern eyes.
Comenius Italic (kerned) compared to Palatino Italic.
Roundhand alphabet by Charles Snell from The Standard-Rules of the Round-Hand and Round-Text Hands (1714).
Weiss Antiqua Italic (E.R. Weiss, Bauer, 1926)
Neither Latin nor Italian use y as a letter. Thus, it does not have deep historical roots. In cursive writing it often takes two forms, one derived from v and the other from u (letters that were interchangeable in Ancient Rome). Italic typefaces often follow the v form, often to the detriment of the rhythm of the letters and thus to consistency of spacing. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is Weiss Antiqua Italic (originally Weiss Kursiv), one of the first typefaces to follow the chancery model. The y has a beautiful, sweeping left arm which makes proper spacing difficult and, in the case of ry or ty, nigh impossible.
Top line: Weiss Italic (tracked) and Weiss Italic (tracked and kerned); Bottom line: Cataneo Light Italic for comparison (kerned).
Franklin Gothic (Morris Fuller Benton, American Type Founders, 1902) and ITC Franklin Gothic (Victor Caruso, International Typeface Corporation, 1980)
Franklin Gothic is one of the most iconic of American typefaces. It is an unusual design in that it is heavy and there was never a regular version from ATF. Instead, ATF made condensed and wide versions and then lumped Franklin Gothic with several other Morris Fuller Benton-designed gothics (Lightline Gothic, News Gothic, Monotone Gothic and Alternate Gothic) as a de facto family. This satisfied printers and designers for decades. But when ITC licensed the face they decided to not only adapt it for photocomposition but to make a proper family. Thus, we have the anomaly of ITC Franklin Gothic Book. The updating of Franklin Gothic involved a number of small annoying adjustments that chipped away at its identity, most of which can be accepted as the price paid for having a harmonious family. The one change that went too far was the mucking about with the distinctive Franklin Gothic g. In ITC Franklin Gothic it looks like a mailbox flag. This completely changes the appearance of a block of text as the ear on the g keeps popping up like a schoolchild overly eager to answer a question.
Top line: Franklin Gothic No. 2 Roman compared to ITC Franklin Gothic Heavy bottom line: Ellington for comparison all kerned.
Thesis (Luc(as) de Groot, FontShop, 1994 on)
Luc(as) de Groot’s Thesis is perhaps the largest type family ever created (144 fonts at last count). Despite its widespread popularity it has one character that makes it unsuitable for certain usages, such as information design: the Q. It has a detached tail which, at best, is a distraction and, at worst, makes the letter look like an O with an accent. This is especially true at small sizes.
top line: TheSans and TheSerif bottom line: Frutiger 55 all kerned.
Syntax (Hans Eduard Meier, Stempel, 1969) and Linotype Syntax (Hans Eduard Meier, Linotype Library, 1997) (now called Syntax Next)
Revising a classic typeface is a dangerous thing, even when there is widespread agreement that the existing version needs a sprucing up. It is even more traumatic to type users when no one but when the original designer thinks that a total overhaul is required. One such instance is Syntax which Hans Eduard Meier, its designer, refashioned from scratch in 1997 as Linotype Syntax. Rather than just fix the poor digitization of the original Meier took the opportunity to return to his original 1955 vision of what the face should be. The result is a design that is more calligraphic than typographic—nice, but flawed. Two of Syntax’s hallmark letters have been ruined rather than improved. In Linotype Syntax the splayed M is splayed even more than before and the R now has an open bowl.
Syntax compared to Linotype Syntax.
Carter Sans (Matthew Carter, Monotype Imaging, 2010)
Sometimes a flaw in a typeface is a very tiny thing. With the new Carter Sans the square dots on the i and j appear too large. Matthew Carter may have done this deliberately to make them hold up at small text sizes. But at display sizes they are too noticeable.
Carter Sans Regular compared to Optima Nova Medium.
Bickham Script (Richard Lipton, Adobe, 1997; OpenType version 2004)
The PostScript version of Bickham Script had a significant flaw: the T, the second most common letter in the English language. It is designed with a very wide base that makes it ambiguous. Is it an T? an I? or even a Z? Instead of being corrected in the OpenType version, this problem has been exacerbated. There are no simpler alternate forms, only two fancier Ts, both of which have similar ambiguity. The designer of the logo for The Astor, an apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, took matters into his own (or her own) hands and simply lopped off the base of the T, among other indignities.
top line: Bickham Script with regular T and contextual Th; Bickham Script with medium T and different h; Bickham Script with large T and different h; Novia Script bottom line: Bickham Script with contextual swash Th; Adobe Caslon Pro with contextual Th; Big Caslon.
OPENTYPE DISCRETIONARY / CONTEXTUAL LIGATURES
This digression was occasioned by the appearance of the automatic Th ligature in Bickham Script Pro when setting samples for this article. This is a contextual ligature, one that is word-dependent. It is on by default but can be turned off. Adobe has pioneered the Th ligature and the first time that I encountered it I was thrilled. It is exactly what I have always done as a calligrapher to solve the horrible gap created by h following T—one of the most common occurrences in the English language. But, when I began to see it in non-calligraphic fonts such as Adobe Caslon I found it distracting. We have become so inured to that large space that no longer notice it, especially given that we read in chunks and the most common Th words (The, This, That, There, These, etc.) are thus gobbled up easily. Ultimately, a ligature is intended to improve spacing so that the reading experience is not disrupted. A ligature that makes us stop and take notice is not doing its job. Maybe the Th ligature will become second nature, but for now I am having second thoughts about its value.Burgundica (Gerrit Noordzij, The Enschedé Font Foundry, 2009)
Burgundica is a modernized fraktur. As such, it has several letters that are inherently problematic for modern readers, especially non-German ones. The A, D and S are all extremely difficult to recognize in frakturs. For Burgundica, Gerrit Noordzij simplified each of them, but not enough. Which one is the fatal flaw depends on the reader. For those who want to still use Burgundica, the solution is to find a compatible roman face and substitute its capitals.
top line: Burgundica X025 bottom line: Burgundica X025 with 84 pt Milo Serif Medium S in second example (kerned).
Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch [Wilhelm-Klingsporschrift] (Rudolf Koch, Klingspor, 1926)
Texturas are not as difficult to use as frakturs for non-German speakers, but they still pose problems. Roman lowercase letters with diagonals in them either stick out or are adapted so well that they are not easily identifiable. The digital version of Wilhelm-Klingsporschrift (now called Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch) by Linotype was modernized to make Rudolf Koch’s masterpiece more palatable to modern designers. The k is excellent but the x is awful. Vertical rhythmn is essential in a textura and the x is a stumbling block. And, for some reason, Linotype ignored the unfamiliar A. For those used to blackletter, the x is the flaw in Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch; for those not used to blackletter, it is the A.
top line: Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch bottom line: Flamande for comparison.
complete character set of Wilhelm Klingsporschrift (Rudolf Koch, Klingspor, 1926). Metal setting courtesy of Michael Babcock.
Univers (Adrian Frutiger, Deberny & Peignot, 1957)
Sometimes the character flaw in a typeface is less obvious. Instead of a letter, it is a figure or a punctuation mark. Univers purists like Helmut Schmid and Willi Kunz insist on Berthold BQ Univers among digital options. They disdain other cuts for being poorly digitized, for having italics with the wrong slope, and for not having the correct ampersand. However, the proper ampersand—a true et ligature—looks odd to those without paleographic or calligraphic training. So, which is the flaw?
top line: Berthold BQ Univers 55 bottom line: Univers SB Roman both kerned.
Gill Sans (Eric Gill, Monotype, 1928)
Figures are often overlooked in discussions of a font’s attributes, but for anyone working in the area of information design or signage they are crucial. The most important figure of all is the 1 because it is the most common. Unfortunately, it is the figure that causes the most trouble. It can be confused with capital I and lowercase l in sans serif typefaces, and in all typefaces its inherent narrow width forces designers to make compromises either in its form or its set width. Eric Gill designed the 1 in Gill Sans without a flag, thus making it virtually indistinguishable from I or l. Monotype resolved this disaster in the days of machine composition with an alternate flagged 1. But it was not included in the digital version of Gill Sans. One solution to this problem was to substitute a 1 from another sans serif face. This is no longer necessary as the flagged 1 is part of Gill Sans Pro.
top line: Gill Sans and Gill Sans kerned with 70 pt Futura Book 1 bottom line: Gill Sans Pro with alternate 1 and Gill Sans Pro with alternate 1 kerned.
Franklin Gothic (Morris Fuller Benton, American Type Founders, 1902) and ITC Franklin Gothic (Victor Caruso, International Typeface Corporation, 1980)
The narrowness of 1 has forced designers to add unwanted space on either side so that it will set properly in tabular matter. This makes for loose text setting. This problem is exacerbated with sans serif faces. One solution has been to add serifs (often oversize ones) to the base of the figure, creating a character that is out of character with the rest of the font. Franklin Gothic is one such example. In a string of numbers the problem is unnoticeable since most figures do not have serifs in a serif font. But when set next to letters a seriffed 1 in a sans serif typeface jumps out like a sore thumb. One solution is to cut off the serif in Adobe Illustrator or FontLab and then kern it. Another is to use a more compatible 1 from another font—or an entirely different set of figures entirely.
top line: News Gothic bottom line: News Gothic kerned with baseline shift (hyphen).
Bulmer (Monotype, 1954; based on ATF Bulmer [1928] which was derived from the types of William Martin, 1792)
Finally, the lowly punctuation mark may be the flaw in a typeface. The exclamation point and the question mark are the most obvious of these since they are the largest. Monotype Bulmer has a chubby exclamation point, resembling an exploding cigar, that is at odds with the elegance of the rest of the typeface. It belongs in a Betty Boop cartoon. On the other hand, Weiss Antiqua has an exclamation point that is so short that it looks to be in danger of vanishing entirely. It is not a bang but a whimper.
Bulmer MT; Weiss Medium (tracked); and Century Schoolbook (tracked) for comparison.
Schneidler Medieval (F.H.E. Schneidler, Bauer, 1936)
To make the question mark in Weiss Antiqua equally short E.R. Weiss cut off the bottom portion where the character either shifts from a curve to a vertical line or simply curls up. Even stranger is the question mark for Schneidler Medieval. It appears to be upside down. For those who like the typeface, the question mark is its flaw. But for those who dislike Schneidler Medieval—and there are reasons, ranging from its overtly cupped serifs to its capital O—the weird question mark is no big deal.
top line: Weiss Medium and Schneidler Medieval (tracked) bottom line: FF Milo Serif for comparison; Schneidler Medieval (tracked and kerned).
After all, some flaws are only blemishes to those who deeply love a typeface. But other flaws are more serious as they hinder legibility, inhibit reading, or fail to perform their expected function. Whether the flaws in a given typeface are fatal or can be worked around depends not only on the typeface but on the typographer. Caveat littera!
July 21, 2011
Flawed Typeface
Do Your Boobs Hang Low
Do they wobble to and fro?
Bring on the drugs
Bring on the drugs
The argument
The research world is a competitive place. One has to perform, innovate, create, think, sweat, concentrate, decipher, write, organize, explain, convince and argue. Not once a month, or once a week, but almost daily.
It is incumbent upon the universities that provide research facilities to optimize the performances of their researchers. One area mostly neglected by nearly all universities is the psycho-medical support of their A teams. It is an oversight that costs them many places in international rankings and may see them slide against hyperactive opponents.
The drugs
It is well-known that amphetamines (speed) enhance performance. One of the world's most prolific mathematicians, Paul Erdös (1913-1996), took speed for most of his life, and slowed down remarkably when because of a bet he had to stay off them for a month (read this). He wrote about 1,500 papers.
Sleepy mathematicians or computer scientists sometimes resort to modafinil (provigil, alertec), a drug that has some side effects but that keeps one awake during the daytime. I know many mathematicians who could use a good dose of modafinil before departmental seminars and at international conferences.
Some people, including this writer, get an alertness boost from the cheap decongestant drug, sudafed. Its active ingredient is pseudoephedrine hydrochloride. Pseudoephedrine has fallen out of grace with the law in several countries, so Pfizer is proposing a watered down and worthless version (for alertness, at least) called "sudafed pe".
The most common performance-enhancing drug is coffee. For some reason, it has become acceptable to use coffee for this purpose, but not so for the drugs mentioned above. Major commercial research labs such as Google's provide unlimited amounts of coffee free of charge to their teams. Some universities have realized the fine return on their investment (a couple of dollars per day per researcher for a huge increase in output and creativity), and are adopting the same strategy.
Nicotine is another stimulant. Many prolific writers cannot live without it. Cigarette breaks provide important triggers for the mind.
Enhanced output and creativity also comes from oxygen pumped to the mind. Nothing is better before an important speech than a brisk one hour walk. Nothing is worse for a researcher than an office building with sealed windows and recirculated, polluted and oxygen-starved air.
The proposal
Start with annual physical check-ups for all research staff.
Next, make coffee the drug of choice. Let it flow without limit, preferably the strong Italian kind, from every machine in every corridor, 24 hours per day.
Treat smokers with respect. Design breathtaking smoking areas.
To those who want amphetamines or other stimulants, the universities should provide prescriptions without the hassle of doctor's office visits.
Get rid of closed windows and fix the air inside office buildings. For example, on my campus, every building constructed after 1970 is basically useless.
Contact
Luc Devroye
School of Computer Science
McGill University
Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6
luc@cs.mcgill.ca
http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/index.html
Jeremy Rifkin - Can we prevent the end of the world in 50 years?
juliusgrey
In 1949, George Orwell published a chilling book describing a totalitarian dictatorship in England in 1984. When the year 1984 came and went and again, when communism crumbled five years later, most commentators assumed that the totalitarianism George Orwell had feared had been avoided.
True, much of what the novel depicted has an eerie resonance today: lotteries as distractions for the masses, video screens in every room and the debasement of language. Perhaps the most striking feature of 1984 that seems to be coming true is the division of the world into three blocks:Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.
But these correct prophecies seem insignificant when one considers the recent triumphs of electoral democracy, the demise of totalitarian regimes and the absence of repressive terror, the apparent dominant theme of the novel and the one that most frightened readers.
On second thought, however, Orwell's ''error'' appears far less clear. The truly dominant feature of 1984 was not political terror, but the destruction of all human spirit, the reduction of those tempted to resist to happy admirers of the system and the elimination of any notion of truth from history.
The terror, after all, applied to only a very small class. The top 5 percent, called the inner party, lived a life of privilege. The bottom 80 per cent, the proles, were neglected and deprived of social services, but not usually terrorized. It was the outer party, made up of professionals and functionaries, that was subject to police terror, deprivation and brainwashing.
The growing disparity of wealth in our society means that both Orwell's picture of a privileged 5 per cent and an excluded 80 per cent apply. The slow decline of the public system of education and health care is a symptom of the rapid growth of the class of the excluded. The major difference between the political structure of 1984 and the society which is developing today is the means of ensuring the loyalty of the middle 15 per cent.
It appears that our society has found it easier to buy them than to terrorize them, to tolerate a minimal degree of dissent, and to exclude those who cannot be contained with ridicule and the threat of destruction of careers.
Clearly it would be preposterous to try to establish a moral equivalence between modern Western democracy and 1984. However, the consequences for independence of thought and of spirit are remarkably similar. Orwell was influenced by his experience of totalitarianism, communist and fascist. However, that totalitarianism was like an early, inefficient automobile compared with the later, more sophisticated models.
Armies of informers were needed because the technological means of obtaining and storing vast amounts of information were not available. Crude propaganda was used in the absence of the more subtle, scientific ways of influencing choices. The repression of non-conformism had to be fierce, because it was clearly possible not to be caught and to resist the dictators with success.
We can only shudder at the thought of what Adolph Hitler or Josef Stalin could have done with modern technology. However, we can also see that a degree of control at least equal to theirs can now be effected without massive resort to expensive squealers and violent repression, which is cumbersome and which usually provokes as much resistance as it destroys.
Moreover, the heavy-handed propaganda used by Joseph Goebbels and Stalin was a failure. Most Germans, for instance, had no illusions about who was winning the war after 1942, in spite of the histrionics of the state broadcasting system.
Yet modern Americans, have a shorter life expectancy than other Westerners, live among shocking poverty far rarer in Canada and in Europe, have very little security and almost no access to politics or to justice but are thoroughly convinced that they live in the best country and are shocked by evidence to the contrary. Clearly, subtler, more nuanced propaganda is far more effective than the shrill kind used 60 years ago.
It is, of course, true that modern society tolerates expression that attacks it fundamentally. This article, for instance, is unlikely to have negative repercussions for its author. Yet, it's also true that publications that carry such articles cater to a high-brow market and have little effect on the majority. Moreover, one of the disturbing tendencies of recent years is the concentration of media power in the hands of the wealthy and the reduction of funds for public broadcasting.
The danger of a single, one-sided view is constantly present. This danger is exacerbated by the decline in the knowledge of history. In 1984. history was falsified and revised to suit current views. While nothing as systematic as this occurs today, history in our time is also adapted and sanitized to suit current political agendas. More important, past events are being presented as a progression moving toward our enlightened epoch.
Popular history, as depicted in the movies Braveheart and Gladiator, is seasoned with anachronisms. Romans and medieval Scots sound like modern Americans. Americans are taught a version of history in which they alone won World War II.
Other aspects of history are also undergoing ideological revision, In fact, our attitude toward history mirrors that of the former communist world which also portrayed the past as an inexorable march towards its goals. One crucial distinction exists between our time and 1984. The totalitarian regime was run by Big Brother and its rules were ruthlessly enforced by state authorities. O'Brian, the ''inner-party'' security chief, told the hero Winston Smith that the system could not be overthrown and that it was a ''boot in the face of mankind forever.''
Yet a centralized dictatorship is always a target for uprising, and the most unconvincing of Orwells' theses was the invincibility of the system. Sooner or later, the outer party or, more likely, the proles would overturn it. Our system, suffocating though it is, does not involve much centralized enforcement.
We have elements of 1984 without Big Brother. Many governments, certainly those of Canada, France, Scandinavia and Germany are sincerely striving to limit the threats to civil liberties. Unfortunately, most of the threats are technological, independent of government and are often wielded by private bodies for profit. It is not easy to find a target like Big Brother, which could be attacked to obtain change.
In fact, the system appears to work by itself, under its own laws. One of the most disturbing features of the system inherent in our information technology is the ease of keeping records. Citizens can't easily expunge their sexual escapades, carelessly expressed opinions and minor offences. In an economic system that worships competition, someone is always ready to use the records against those who have strayed from the norm.
As a result, citizens become conformist, cautious and unimaginative. Because the system works under independent technological and economic laws, no major changes can be brought about through political action and people have lost interest in parties, ideologies and elections. The political process simply becomes a way to distribute patronage among rival groups.
Moreover, history has shown that technology and its uses cannot be stopped whether for good or bad reasons. Thus, even more than 1984, the new system of repressing independent thought could prove ''a boot in the face of mankind forever.''
What is to be done? Optimism would be foolhardy, given the uncontrollable nature of technology. Nevertheless certain measures could slow or even reverse the trend towards Orwellianism. Firstly, both our society and 1984 are grounded in economic inequality and in disparity between the means of the small elite and the majority. Both also pay lip service to a populist ideology of equality. Promoting measures to decrease the gap between rich and poor, whether inside each country or internationally, will remove the interest that some might have in preserving their privileges and thus weaken their economic basis for a restrictive society.
Secondly, the promotion of public, high-quality, humanistic education will bring about historical awareness and verbal expressiveness and will hinder the standardization that is setting in. It is more important to teach history and literature early and thoroughly than to concentrate on employment skills that each person will learn in time in any event.
Third, although, as Orwell showed, the state can threaten civil liberties, private interests are even more dangerous and harder to control. The return to political awareness, to voter participation and to a belief that politics matter would be a first step in opposing the new 1984. It is therefore essential that the democratic state not further abdicate its role, and that we resist siren calls for smaller, less obtrusive government.
We should remember that the 1984 state provided few services other than the security network. Social justice is usually an inherent part of freedom. The government's role as a major actor in society, far from creating a risk of totalitarianism, is rather a guarantee of freedom.
The law has also a major role to play in preserving freedom. In view of the danger presented by records in an age of information technology, ways must be found to attenuate and even erase records of' criminal convictions and to prevent the use of personal data or past histories against individuals. This goes against the recent tendencies which have been remarkably unforgiving. It is time to reconsider this trend.
However, the most important resistance to 1984 is that of each citizen in his own life. The repudiation of conformism, of the rampant complacency, of the fear of offending, and of political correctness and a skeptical attitude toward the received truth of our times will go a long way in distancing us from 1984.
Ultimately, 1984 is a society that negates the ideals of freedom of thought, personal independence and conscience. These are precisely the values each of us must adopt.
Julius Grey is law professor at McGill University