Writing Worth Reading
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Writing Worth Reading
This book is interesting because it’s not something which happens in our mind. This is about what others do to our externalised memory. Photographs, books and letters are all part of that. But, as we begin to rely on them because we realise that our own recollection isn’t that perfect, we may become quite dependent on these objects as pieces of memory.
Your next choice ties in with the theme of rewriting memory – this is David King’s The Commissar Vanishes.
This book is intriguing because it’s not focusing on something that happens in our mind. It is about what others do to our externalised memory. Photographs, books and letters are all part of that. But, as we realise that our own recollection isn’t that perfect and begin to rely on these, we may become quite dependent on the authenticity of these objects as pieces of (our) memory.
In this book David King looks at Soviet photoshopping. Whenever someone in official photos fell from grace he or she was manually retouched from the photographs. Dozens of people were airbrushed out of history.
As we externalise our memories and put stuff up on Flickr, Facebook and YouTube, these companies will have the power to change our history. And it is easier than in Stalin’s times. Because, unfortunately, digital memories are much more malleable than analogue memories, and digital changes are harder to detect. In fact, a US colleague of mine told me that in the medical field peer reviewers of academic journals now struggle with digital photos that have been digitally altered.
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Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is the incoming Professor of Internet Regulation and Governance at the Oxford Internet Institute. Before that he directed the Information & Innovation Policy Research Centre in Singapore and for a decade was on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Mayer-Schönberger founded Ikarus Software in 1986, and developed Virus Utilities, which became the bestselling Austrian software product.
