tomdispatch | Even if some future government stepped over one of the
last remaining red lines in our world and simply assassinated
whistleblowers as they surfaced, others would always emerge. Back in
1948, in his eerie novel 1984,
however, Orwell suggested a far more diabolical solution to the
problem. He conjured up a technological device for the world of Big
Brother that he called "the memory hole."
In his dark future, armies of bureaucrats, working in what he
sardonically dubbed the Ministry of Truth, spent their lives erasing or
altering documents, newspapers, books, and the like in order to create
an acceptable version of history. When a person fell out of favor, the
Ministry of Truth sent him and all the documentation relating to him
down the memory hole. Every story or report in which his life was in any
way noted or recorded would be edited to eradicate all traces of him.
In Orwell's pre-digital world, the memory hole was a vacuum tube into
which old documents were physically disappeared forever. Alterations to
existing documents and the deep-sixing of others ensured that even the
sudden switching of global enemies and alliances would never prove a
problem for the guardians of Big Brother. In the world he imagined,
thanks to those armies of bureaucrats, the present was what had always
been -- and there were those altered documents to prove it and nothing
but faltering memories to say otherwise. Anyone who expressed doubts
about the truth of the present would, under the rubric of “thoughtcrime,” be marginalized or eliminated.
Government and Corporate Digital Censorship
Increasingly, most of us now get our news, books, music, TV, movies,
and communications of every sort electronically. These days, Google
earns more advertising revenue than all U.S. print media combined. Even the venerable Newsweek no longer publishes a paper edition. And in that digital world, a certain kind of “simplification” is being explored.
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