![]() ![]() Merriam-Webster defines the phrase as “a situation or area of activity that is created by the development of something completely new and different” which is misleading at best. The lack of a standardized definition for a “brave new world” as an idiom doesn’t help the problem. "Brave New World Photography" Brennan/Flickr But a bright outlook does not a brave new world make. If robots turn around and try to kill us all that would be a brave new world indeed, or if our clones trap us in a caste system, a case could be made. Insurance premiums are not experiencing a brave new world and neither are airline companies. There is not a brave new world for cricket, nor for digital music, or television streaming. To borrow another phrase: “ I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Curious then that the “Brave New World of…” formulation has all but taken over the media. The phrase is basically a placeholder for dramatic irony. However, the brave new worlds that both John and Miranda eventually enter are not, in fact, wondrous places. He yearns to see the “brave new world” outside of what he knows. Like Miranda, John knows only a dark, confined life made so by a parent. You know these words because they echoed in the mouth of John the Savage in Aldous Huxley’s 1931 Brave New World. “How many godly creatures are there! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in’t!” When a magically produced storm causes a crew of noblemen to seek refuge on her island, Miranda is understandably excited about seeing other human beings. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a teenage girl named Miranda has essentially spent her entire life on an island alone, save for her curmudgeon wizard dad. ![]()
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