Who will care for us in the future? Watch out for the rise of the robots Madeleine Bunting

The haunting genius of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is that it suggests how some ideas can become literally unimaginable when the language that describes them is destroyed. He wrote of freedoms that political power could make simply impossible to talk, write and think about – because there was no language in which to do so. It's a brilliant idea with multiple applications in every age – suggesting that we need always to be ready to interrogate the reasons why ideas are being reconfigured, compromised or destroyed. Related: 'Bedblocking' – what happens when profits are put ahead of people Here is an unexpected candidate: care. It's a small word, so pervasive and overloaded with meanings that its significance has often been easy to overlook. It's the care given by parents that nurtures us into adulthood, and it's the care given by others that supports us in old age and as we die; and in-between, care is the oft overlooked scaffolding of our lives, on which wellbeing and daily life depend.