Thursday 8 December 2016

07/12/16 - How the loss of newsprint threatens our democracy and liberty

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/dec/07/how-the-loss-of-newsprint-threatens-our-democracy-and-liberty

Orwell’s ministry of truth rewrote history with the aid of memory holes.

The article focuses on the importance of the fact that there is a greater decrease and interest in print platforms. Greenslade argues that print platform has an advantage in the sense that a totalitarian government has it harder when it comes to trying to track a paper trail, however a digital signature allows these corrupt governments to track down due to the digital signatures. 

It also talks about the fact that many articles and records are not being saved on the internet, Google's ability to show certain indexed articles and records over others shows there would be a dilution and lack of accessibility of the information. 
  • "the record of the 1950s that helped me does not exist in the early 21st century."
  • "The European Court of Justice ruling in 2014 on the right to be forgotten through Google browser data processing means hundreds of thousands of articles and online records are being disconnected to the searching process."
  • "I have seen the Metropolitan police change the detail of an important online media release which had huge significance in determining the public interest debate at the centre of a major story."
Personally, I think it is very important to be indexing and converting old historical informational texts into digital copies to preserve from physical limitations. However, there should also be a better way to remove incriminating information or documents from the internet permanently. However, this would cause a lot of problems, as who would determine what is incriminating enough to be removed from the internet? There needs to be a balance between the both for there to be a greater level of positive impact on society.

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