Wikipedia Winstons A Worldwide Web Worry

Newcastle Herald

Friday August 31, 2007

Greg Ray

YOU'D be flat out finding a bigger fan of the internet than me. Not that I know my way around it all that well: it's just that I appreciate how helpful it is in lots of ways.

But I've got my reservations about it all the same.

Not just that any old big brother with half a mind to can track and trace your reading habits. And not just that every villain from Nairobi to Moscow is plotting new ways to pinch your PIN numbers and raid your bank account.

My main reservation is the apparent fragility of information on the worldwide web.

I've already had the experience of finding interesting information on a site one day, then returning to read it again only to find it's gone.

And many times I find that internet sources of alternative news and viewpoints are hacked and maimed by people who don't appreciate diversity of opinion.

We've all read about how certain governments notably China's forbid their citizens access to certain websites and outlaw the use online of words, expressions and thoughts that run counter to the interests of the ruling party.

Recently there's been a lot of publicity about the practice of people and organisations editing their own entries on the Wikipedia free encyclopedia site.

Everybody including Australian politicians, the Vatican and the CIA has been beavering away, making sure the world only reads those things about them that they'd like to have known or believed.

The more this stuff goes on the more I'm beginning to resent George Orwell. I used to think his bleak old book Nineteen Eighty-Four was simply a brilliant piece of social prediction.

But lately I'm starting to wonder if the world's leaders haven't been pinching some of his ideas straight off the rack and putting them into practice. Big Brother in every lounge room, dumbing down the language and the population, keeping everybody scared with fears of endless war . . .

If you've read the book you'll remember the "hero" Winston Smith worked in the Ministry of Information where his job was to rewrite history on demand to suit the changing whims of the government of Oceania and its omnipresent front-man, Big Brother.

Oceania, which vaguely resembled our real-life English-speaking countries, was constantly at war with one of the two other great blocs: Eastasia and Eurasia.

To keep everybody frightened, Big Brother's mob wasn't averse to lobbing the occasional bomb into its own population and blaming the enemy of the month for the outrage.

When Eurasia was the enemy Winston's job was to make sure the public archives showed that Eurasia had always been the enemy and that Eastasia had always been an ally. When that changed, he'd have to purge the archives and rewrite all old records to prove exactly the opposite had "always been true".

To some extent the world has always had its Winstons, of course, but it seems to me that the internet is demonstrating a potential to make their job easier than it's ever been.

gray@theherald.com.au

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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