By late 1983 the media in Britain were certainly excited even apprehensive with the year 1984 approaching. How near were we going to be in George Orwell's vision as envisaged in his novel '1984' that he wrote in 1948.
Professor Heinz Wolff revisits Orwell's Britain as he climbs aboard a London bus and finds himself in 1948 and a country that had barely stepped out of World War 2, there we still people wearing demob suits,there was rationing and Clement Attlee was setting up the welfare state.
Professor Wolff really asks us to think how much really has changed in the 36 years since Orwell wrote the book and the answer was we were more wedded to the past than we thought.
I watched this programme with interest as a schoolboy at the time I naturally thought that 1948 might as well be another epoch although 1984 Britain under Mrs Thatcher was more closer to Big Brother than some people at the time would care to admit to.
Looking back I have to admit that things really had not changed much from the post war years to even up to the late 1990s. We might had better cars, music or fashion and newer technology but the change was gradual.
Since the internet and IT boom of the late 1990s, there really has been a quantum leap.