Surveillance is possible but not all that feasible with the advent of audio transmission. Controlling and monitoring someone's every move let alone a whole nation or even city would be a herculean task with just analog audio signals or even analog video transmission as it existed in decades past. I would posit that information-era technology and communications is the earliest a ruling power could surveil a large population like in 1984.

The kind of control you reference via big brother is only really possible through mass communication, repeating messaging to a populace until the eventual adoption of those values requires media or communications that can be passed on reliably every day.

Reliably meaning that there is as little loss in translation as possible, the message is exact and indelible. Things such as town criers or other social messaging would make it extremely unlikely for totalitarian social control to be successful.

From this we can assert that everyone hearing/reading/seeing the same message leads to it being self repeating socially, there is no social representative per-se, no messenger just the message at the initial point of contact with society. The message then has a high likelihood of being self-replicating if it is propagandized effectively creating and/or resolving emotions of the populace.

Therefore the only time it enters a likelihood of success is with the following conditions; following the technological advance of our own history this is the earliest point at which this type of social control can be enforced.

The following technological states need to be true at a minimum for a high chance of succeeding:

1. The printing press exists

2. Most of the population dwells in cities or easy-to-govern population centers

3. Industrial production is on track to become the majority of the labor force

The following civic and social conditions need to be true:

1. The population has a basic literacy

2. The printing press is efficiently controlled by the ruling power

3. Ownership over print media is strictly controlled

4. Populace has sufficient access to food

Enforcing education to a state standard is not absolutely necessary, without it the populace needs only limited education and constant access to food and comforts. If they are 'comfortable enough' then they can be occupied with non-survival related dilemmas.

Notice that likelihood is the word in all of this, a ruling power can control a population with access to resources in order to fund a policing body large enough to control a population, this of course is much easier with a small population. For example to the latter, a rich and paranoid city-state with the population of renaissance venice and the wealth of Mansa-Musa of Mali.

If you want to know the whole story about this kind of control read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky, there is also a documentary.

Surveillance is possible but not all that feasible with the advent of audio transmission. Controlling and monitoring someone's every move let alone a whole nation or even city would be a herculean task with just analog audio signals or even analog video transmission as it existed in decades past. I would posit that information-era technology and communications is the earliest a ruling power could surveil a large population like in 1984.

The kind of control you reference via big brother is only really possible through mass communication, repeating messaging to a populace until the eventual adoption of those values requires media or communications that can be passed on reliably every day.

Reliably meaning that there is as little loss in translation as possible, the message is exact and indelible. Things such as town criers or other social messaging would make it extremely unlikely for totalitarian social control to be successful.

From this we can assert that everyone hearing/reading/seeing the same message leads to it being self repeating socially, there is no social representative per-se, no messenger just the message at the initial point of contact with society. The message then has a high likelihood of being self-replicating if it is propagandized effectively creating and/or resolving emotions of the populace.

Therefore the only time it enters a likelihood of success is with the following conditions; following the technological advance of our own history this is the earliest point at which this type of social control can be enforced.

The following technological states need to be true at a minimum for a high chance of succeeding:

1. The printing press exists

2. Most of the population dwells in cities or easy-to-govern population centers

3. Industrial production is on track to become the majority of the labor force

The following civic and social conditions need to be true:

1. The population has a basic literacy

2. The printing press is efficiently controlled by the ruling power

3. Ownership over print media is strictly controlled

4. Populace has sufficient access to food

Enforcing education to a state standard is not absolutely necessary, without it the populace needs only limited education and constant access to food and comforts. If they are 'comfortable enough' then they can be occupied with non-survival related dilemmas.

Notice that likelihood is the word in all of this, a ruling power can control a population with access to resources in order to fund a policing body large enough to control a population, this of course is much easier with a small population. For example to the latter, a rich and paranoid city-state with the population of renaissance Venice and the wealth of Mansa-Musa of Mali.

If you want to know the whole story about this kind of control read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky, there is also a documentary.