Impact of Digital Archives on History

Archives of information have been centralized on computers.

The Guardian's archives are only in one place.

They're not in libraries all across the nation that people look for.

They're only looked for on the Internet.

And because of copyright legislation,

they're not copied elsewhere to other places on the Internet.

So when something disappears

from the archives, the electronic archives of the West, to which all information

is moving into, it is gone forever.

It has not only ceased to have existed,

it has ceased to ever have existed.

And when you go to those webpages that have been removed from Western papers,

you won't see the tear lines.

You will just see page not found.

You won't see anything in the index at all.

We are now approaching the state of Orwell's dictum,

perfect dictum, that he who controls the present controls the past.

He who controls Internet servers controls the intellectual record of mankind.

And by controlling that,

controls our perceptions of who we are.

And by controlling that,

controls what laws and regulations we make in society.