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Who controls the past

Updated: Nov 13

“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”

I wasn’t really planning on writing much more about Nineteen Eighty-Four, but the my recent re-reading of the book has me thinking a lot about politics, history, and what might be called “societal epistemology”, which would describe how we, as a society, “know” things. And, with recent events, we should all be watching for continued attacks on truth and history.


Traditional media, however fragile, have some degree of permanence. Manuscripts can be dated and compared with translations, artifacts, and other sources to assess their age, accuracy, and reliability. While this process takes an extraordinary amount of time, it leads to a better understanding of history, and an appreciation for the factors which influence it.


Consider the epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Scholars have discussed, debated, and argued over the evidence for centuries, and though we know a fair bit, there are really more questions than answers. That makes it a good example.


In the ancient world, it was generally accepted that Homer was a poet who lived some time around 850 BCE. Beyond that, however, there was very little known. Surviving information and “biographies” date from centuries later, and (to the degree that they were not simply invented) were likely based on references in the poems or on traditions passed down orally. As for the Iliad and the Odyssey, most modern scholars agree that these two works were produced by different authors, each of whom likely borrowed heavily from earlier oral traditions.


With regard to the stories themselves, the ancient world generally accepted the Trojan War as an historic event, though details were debatable. Over time, though, attitudes changed, and by the 19th century, many scholars considered the works to be pure fiction. Then, in the 1870s, Heinrich Schliemann “found” the historical Troy, proving that the Iliad was historical, so problem solved, right?


Uh, no. Sadly, the site Schliemann found was about a thousand years older than it would have had to be to coexist with the Mycenaeans. In the intervening years, we have learned a lot more about that period, but it all boils down to us knowing that accounts of the “Trojan War”, “composed” by “Homer” fall somewhere in the vast grey area between “pure fiction” and “pure fact”.


It’s enough to give you a headache, right?


Back to Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith’s role at the Ministry of Truth was to “correct” the historical record in accordance with the current position of the Party.


“As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs – to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.”

The use of the evocative term “palimpsest” raises an interesting point, which may (though I suspect not) have been intended by Orwell. A palimpsest is a manuscript page, from which the original text was removed so that it could be re-used. In the early Middle Ages, the parchment or vellum was “washed” using milk and oat bran so it could be re-used, usually by turning the page 90 degrees. In these cases, the original text could sometimes be seen, and so recovered – a number of famous ancient texts only survived as palimpsests. In the later Middle Ages, the surface was usually scraped away with powdered pumice, which destroyed the original and made it practically unrecoverable. Still, it is interesting that a palimpsest can (under certain circumstances) retain evidence of the original.



In the modern world, consider how fragile electronic records are, in comparison with the relative durability of traditional media. How can we know what was said before, when so many try to gaslight us with accusations of “fake news”, while providing a constant stream of lies?


Fortunately, some organizations provide fact checks – utterly ridiculous that being “fact checked” is sometimes attacked as something bad. Perish the thought that someone’s lies be called out!


But what if people started changing the records? What if a person’s historical positions could be changed to be consistent with their current positions?


That, I think, is part of why the Internet Archive and similar services are so important. I’ve discussed the Wayback Machine before – it is part of the archive which stores web pages. I think the recent attacks on the service highlight the need for protecting and promoting reliable archives which contain an accurate and unchanging picture of the past. Beyond that, though, it appears that libraries, archives, and museums are now more frequent targets for cyber-criminals. Is this because they generally have less funding and are easier targets? Or is this part of a trend toward attacks on the infrastructure supporting cultural identity, including history, art, and poetry?


In this case, a group called SN_BlackMeta claimed 'credit' for (one part of) the attack. This group claims to be pro-Palestinian, and states that the attack is aimed at drawing attention to the sate of affairs in the Middle East. However, there is speculation that this group is associated with another group known as Anonymous Sudan, and may have ties to Russia. Still, anyone attacking services which support our ability to accurately view our history is – in my opinion, at least - doing a disservice to all humankind.


Now, consider the implications of a group which could directly access archives of this type, and alter information at will. Very, very bad. Fortunately, it would also be very difficult – there are a lot of independent services, a lot of overlap, some internal validations and cross-checking, and there are organizations which watch for attacks of exactly this type. That said, detecting activity is one thing – actually unravelling what happened and how is often a lot more difficult. Another good reason to ensure that we are maintaining these services in as clear and transparent a way as possible.


How do we do this? One way is to continue to support archives maintained by national governments, such as Library and Archives Canada, whose policies include the use of cryptographic hashes to validate the integrity of documents. I’ve discussed hashes before, but the short version is that they are a way to create a mathematical snapshot of a file, which can then be used to confirm that the file has not been altered in any way.


It’s hard, expensive, and not sexy, but it is vitally important for our future that we have a clear picture of our past. Anything which puts that at risk should be taken very seriously, which is why we should all be worried about attacks on services like public libraries and the Internet Archive, and should treat these institutions as an essential part of our global society.


Cheers!

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