But what shocks me most is what this implies about the (many?) managers at Amazon who are responsible for it. They must be either:
(a) under so much pressure that they decided to go ahead with it despite being aware of the horrifying similarities their New Approved Language has with Newspeak, the centrally controlled language that prohibits the use of certain words in Orwell's classic novel, 1984; or
(b) so poorly educated that they're blissfully unaware of the parallels, and perhaps even think of themselves as really clever for having thought up this Orwellian scheme on their own.
In my experience with managers of all sorts, (a) is incredibly common. Low-level managers everywhere are under a ton of pressure, and are often stuck in a position where they know the measures they are implementing hurt the people who report to them, but they've been railroaded into it and don't see any realistic alternative.
But what shocks me most is what this implies about the (many?) managers at Amazon who are responsible for it. They must be either:
(a) under so much pressure that they decided to go ahead with it despite being aware of the horrifying similarities their New Approved Language has with Newspeak, the centrally controlled language that prohibits the use of certain words in Orwell's classic novel, 1984; or
(b) so poorly educated that they're blissfully unaware of the parallels, and perhaps even think of themselves as really clever for having thought up this Orwellian scheme on their own.