Aside: it's a big problem for archivists. Huge amounts of information have, and will continue inevitably to disappear. Some of this due to "active measures" (e.g. Orwell's Memory Hole). But the sad truth is that a lot of it, the majority I suspect, is simply lost to degradation of archive media, accidental erasure, or simply failing to s…
Aside: it's a big problem for archivists. Huge amounts of information have, and will continue inevitably to disappear. Some of this due to "active measures" (e.g. Orwell's Memory Hole). But the sad truth is that a lot of it, the majority I suspect, is simply lost to degradation of archive media, accidental erasure, or simply failing to save the data. E.g. future society will not even have an airbrushed figure of Stain walking alongside a river. We won't even have the doctored image any more, much less its original. Historians will have to rely on secondary sources to attempt to piece together just who these Stalin or Trotsky persons were.
Aside: it's a big problem for archivists. Huge amounts of information have, and will continue inevitably to disappear. Some of this due to "active measures" (e.g. Orwell's Memory Hole). But the sad truth is that a lot of it, the majority I suspect, is simply lost to degradation of archive media, accidental erasure, or simply failing to save the data. E.g. future society will not even have an airbrushed figure of Stain walking alongside a river. We won't even have the doctored image any more, much less its original. Historians will have to rely on secondary sources to attempt to piece together just who these Stalin or Trotsky persons were.
The digital photo album of reality, or a memory card full of uncounted votes. Lost, degraded, failure due to non-hermetical care....