Saturday, May 30, 2009

Paper vs. Electronic, Slight Return



Sorry, I didn't get around to this in my previous, self-absorbed post on this topic, but one of the main reasons for maintaining a healthy hard-copy book world is what Mr Orwell was illuminating in 1984: governments are constitutionally incapable of keeping their filthy hands out of tampering with written truths. (I'll let that statement stand alone, it works for me as stated.)

The fact is, electronically stored text is easier to "revise" than hardcopy, paper text. As we have seen, the Soviet Union (and other criminal governments, and we have had a few of those) was quite successful at altering paper text to suit their needs, removing dudes from pictures, blacking out text, altering text, controlling what was printed. All of this is perhaps even simpler in electronic format. You know, Change All.

"Just give me some truth, all I need is the truth" as Mr Lennon said.

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