Re-Writing History (The WWW Way)

mr_angry

This thought process has pretty much been kicked off by an article by Lance Ulanoff, which you can find here (that URL may not be around for long, so if anyone can find a stable mirror, feel free to post).

We have long acknowledged the phrase that "history is written by the victors", but our reliance on the Internet as a source of factual documents is creating a new worry. What about history being written and re-written again and again based on the ideology of whoever dictates the document in question at the time?

The Internet gives us the power to reach mass readership very easily, but it also gives us the power to go back and edit mistakes, omissions, and things we wish we hadn't written at the time. If I was to slag off... say DeVore, or somebody... in this thread, what are the chances I could edit the post again before he read it? If I accused him of a crime, what are the chances I could alter somebody else's opinion, but then escape any punishment by removing that statement before a mod saw it? Probably pretty small. But nevertheless, possible.

This is one of the dangers becoming apparent on the web today, particularly with the advent of e-government. I know myself that I have used the Irish government's Oasis portal many times to check on my rights in various legal matters. However, what if someone was to alter these pages with the aim of reaping some personal benefit, or benefiting a particular group, even for a short period of time? With the increasing use of e-government sites, this only becomes more and more of an issue.

So, my question is: what can we do about it? Can we do anything about it?

The Corinthian

Nothing. This post never happend.



Last edited by Sony Records on 06-02-2004 at 11:53

Havelock

Visa-via, Orwell's Ministry of Truth in "1984"?
The erasure of any document on line, the alterration of public access documents is done openly by America, removing information, which "may prove useful to terrorist". Its a horrific thought but there is nothing we can do to stop it.

Cabaal

Quickly while there is still time print out everything on the internet!

johnKarma

The MTV story is pretty trivial compared to the likes of this.

ykt0di9url7bc3

I was reading that this "hitler?" was a really nice guy on some website the other day... i wonder what my local library has to say about him?

The Corinthian

Originally posted by SearrarD
I was reading that this "hitler?" was a really nice guy on some website the other day... i wonder what my local library has to say about him?

Apparantly it's inappropriate to say he may even have been human...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3456169.stm

Cabaal

Originally posted by The Corinthian
Apparantly it's inappropriate to say he may even have been human...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3456169.stm

So what do they want to reffer to him as?
an animal a alien?

He was human and he was able to paint so what?
nothing wrong with showing what he painted, surely it means he did something good?

amp

Originally posted by The Corinthian
Apparantly it's inappropriate to say he may even have been human...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3456169.stm

Or rather that he had a human side. I was half expecting that link to end up being about someone claiming Hitler was a robot.

Personally I think the ability to change articles after they've been published is a good thing. It allows for factual mistakes to be corrected and thus becomes something that refines the truth rather than corrupts it.

True, an online magazine could alter it's earlier editions to reflect a different attitude or spin on something but it would be much harder for them to include incorrect facts.

Besides which paper newspapers do this all the time. They put out several editions during the day. The front page of those editions can be radically different.

Let's take WW2 for example. Sure, the allies wrote the history. They won. But it doesn't alter the facts that the nazi's committed terrible crimes. Also the allies lied to their populations about various facts in that war for propaganda reasons.

Now lets transplant this pre-internet war to today. Surely it'd be far harder to keep Auchwitz and Dachau a secret if the internet was around? All it would take would be somebody with a digital camera and an internet connection to expose what was going on. Back then you'd have to get the film developed (by someone you trusted) and then either get the pictures out yourself (and risk death/imprisonment) or risk posting them.

Regarding Oasis. Well firstly Oasis isn't susposed to be a repository for our laws, it's a guide to them and government services. It's in their best interests to make sure that it's accurate as if people got the impression that it wasn't they'd cease to use it.

Why do people regard the BBC so highly (despite recent events)? Because they have a good reputation for telling the facts without to much spin.

There is one downside of course. The ability to edit after publishing can lead to more laziness in finding the facts. This can happen to any journalist who is under a lot of pressure. But like I say this can lead to people perceiving the journalist as unreliable over time.

That's why I've re-written this post twice before I posted it

Commissar

That seemed to be quite a good painting actually. I was always under the impression that he was a poor painter.

ixoy

Originally posted by Commissar
That seemed to be quite a good painting actually. I was always under the impression that he was a poor painter.

Check out the film "Max" with John Cusack. It deals with Hitler's attempts to become an artist.

Capt'n Midnight

History is written by the victor.
very little is known about carthiginans because the romans destroyed all traces they could find of it. - One priest burned most of the Mayan manuscripts (and the RAF got most of the rest in a Berlin museum)

There is a theory that if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite amount of typewritters they will come up with great works of literature etc. The junk churned out on the internet disproves this theroy.

Without verifiable facts you can treat most of what is poured out on the internet as opinion.

sceptre

Originally posted by Commissar
That seemed to be quite a good painting actually. I was always under the impression that he was a poor painter.

As was I. In a simplistic way I'd always assumed that it was /partly/ Hitler's unsuccessful art career (my assumption was due to crapness) that propelled him into his later exploits. As Cabaal said the guy was human with (obvious) human faults and presumably some not so obvious human faults.

Might be worth checking out that movie then.

Incidentally the perspective in the picture is arseways - check out the size of the two pillars relative to each other (assuming that the two pillars are actually the same size). A few "small" and "far away" classes wouldn't go amiss. Having said that, I haven't done any drawing of any kind in fifteen years (& haven't used watercolours since early 1986) and would be rather pleased if I managed to draw that in the morning

dr_manhattan

I dunno - I'm an illustrator, and I have to say, unless he was untrained when he did it, if this is supposed to be a finished piece it's not that it's terrible, but it's so incredibly bland (and has such basic mistakes in perspective - as well as the pillars, the cylinder of the dome is kinda arseways and flattened)

All I can say is, that wouldn't have made it into my entry-to-college portfolio. Maybe not even into my sketchbook.

Hope I don't get hunted down by online fascists now, LOL: you untermensch! You cannot recognise the beauty of the fuhrer! LIKE HIS PAINTING OR DIE!

;-)

DadaKopf

What about history being written and re-written again and again based on the ideology of whoever dictates the document in question at the time?

I thought this was what history was all about! Everything is framed by kinds of ideology.

But, yeah, I agree with you that the ease with which authentic archives can be altered is worrying. But also, as amp said, it's good to be able to go back and correct mistakes. But I always understood the process of history as being one of constant correction of past ideas or documents.

What I find interesting is the way that this technology is breaking down our concepts of authenticity. We tend to think that, no matter how much ideas may be altered in the future, no matter how much winners try to invent the past, there is always a deep well of authentic historical primary resources. This is no longer the case. Primary resources are losing their fixity in time.

People might think that this doesn't affect the writing of history. History is a socially constructed process - no matter what the reality of an event was, it was written by people with a political agenda, by someone inhabiting a historical paradigm which colours what is said and understood. History is about assembling events in a meaningful way. But whatever the process of the writing of history is, we nonetheless have faith in the facticity of the objective authenticity of primary historical resources. But now that that is breaking down, what will the consequences be?

I don't like to predict but I suspect that skilled actors will most certainly use this chronological fragmentation to literally rewrite history. I also suspect that if this becomes a widespread phenomenon, we'll develop a different idea of history. I mean, the concept that historians should use primary archival sources to write history only developed in the 19th century, before that it was largely anecdotal and eyewitness accounts written by privilidged people. In the 19th century, history was restricted to the Great Powers because most other countries didn't keep archives, or were thought not to keep archives, or simply not worthy of study. Therefore, as history became a kind of science, our concept of history changed. Now our concept of history is more sociological and fluid. We may, in time, develop a new conception in which past and present collide.

Urgh...

Oh, I dunno, it's late, I'm tired. G'night.