“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell
What do we know anymore? And how do we know it?
We live in scary times. Not because of threats at every turn – we exist in the greatest era of human history, with record degrees of ingenuity and comfort and freedom. What makes them downright frightening is the degree to which – in the blink of a cultural eye – we have lost our ability to divine truth from fiction.
What is “on the record” anymore, beyond the ability to be changed? Orwell’s Oceania from 1984 was a totalitarian nightmare, where any and every fact could be erased or retro-fitted into existing dogma at any moment. You simply had to have the access to edit the record. [Read more…]