Aldous Huxley: the prophet of our brave new digital dystopia | John Naughton | Comment is free | The Guardian: It is set in the London of the distant future – AD 2540 – and describes a fictional society inspired by two things: Huxley's imaginative extrapolation of scientific and social trends; and his first visit to the US, in which he was struck by how a population could apparently be rendered docile by advertising and retail therapy.