Scraped clean and reinscribed
Details of the GWAC deal have been removed from the provincial government website. The Hydro website now archives news only as far back as 2002. A search of the site for guaranteed winter availability contract using the sites own search engine returned no results. A google search for the same term yielded several hits, all of which have been apparently removed from the Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro website.
— Bondpapers, 2009
As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of 'The Times' and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.
What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. 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.
— George Orwell, 1984, 1948
Labels: George Orwell
1 Comments:
Pneumatic tubes were also featured on the remake of the TV series "Fantasy Island."
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