Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, how much history can you recall from memory to re-teach to the next generation?
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This is why books are so important. Real, physical, paper books. The scenario you are proposing is precisely what Fahrenheit 451 is about.
the catch is that the Fahrenheit 451 scenario nowadays just require a storage device to fail... very ecological, Greta must approve it
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I have a stack of the Animorphs in my attic. Yours is just speculative fiction.
.......huh?
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All records of history have been deleted.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Like others, I question the ability to delete a book. And while a regime would be able to change digital literature easily, and educational literature like school books being a close second; changing a book in someone's storage unit is a lot harder.
It also handwaves away the other ways we keep history as well. Would people's family photo albums be deleted? What about a great grandma's diary? In some rural areas the family bible has some insanely well kept family records.
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While I understand it doesn't quite fit the scenario, it does strike me as a good way to preserve "lost information" in a similar situation. Pair that with a solar charger (or even improvise something like a pedal charger), and you're pretty set for a lot of basic information people would struggle to reconstruct.
Some ebook readers have a microsd card slot, so you could fit an offline copy of Wikipedia on a device with half a year of battery life (in airplane mode)
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How do I print the 100GB English Wikipedia?
How do I even transport something that big without the authoritarian governmwnt noticing?
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
There were Romans (basically Greek cosplayers), some dude with elephants who may or may not have been a cannibal. Then some dude got nailed to some lumber for trying to tell people to chill and love eachother. A few thousand years of fighting about that. Columbo sailed to India but found Aztecs instead. The cubs finally won... And that about brings us up to date.
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"Look kid, all you need to know is that up until 2016 the world was simpler, but then they killed a gorilla which lead to the rise of fascism in 2025"
RIP Hambe. He was the best of us.
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There were troll dolls too.
And garbage pail kids
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RIP Hambe. He was the best of us.
Dance off for hambe
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
I could probably recite Bill Wurtz's "History of the entire world i guess". And go into some more detail if someone asked.
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.......huh?
How would you prove that your books reflect the true history?
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How do I print the 100GB English Wikipedia?
How do I even transport something that big without the authoritarian governmwnt noticing?
wrote last edited by [email protected]"Print"?
I mean, you're in a fascist global dystopia and you're gonna get picky about formats? I can carry a copy of Wikipedia in a SD card the size of my pinky nail, and I know because I have one. Who are these hipster kids that look at my Wonder Phone of Truth and go "well, this would be a lot easier on my eyeballs if you got me a paperback edition".
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This is why books are so important. Real, physical, paper books. The scenario you are proposing is precisely what Fahrenheit 451 is about.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Funnily enough RB, the author of F451, insists that everyone else is wrong, and that book is actually about falling literacy rates due to television viewership.
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
War, no rights for most, war, war, more war, fight for rights (for everyone who wasn't an old, rich man) worldwide, more war, we got rights granted for a lot of groups, and now in the big 2025 they're being threatened because of said old rich men
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Funnily enough RB, the author of F451, insists that everyone else is wrong, and that book is actually about falling literacy rates due to television viewership.
wrote last edited by [email protected]The book is prescient as hell. He saw the natural consequences of that reality and followed it to it’s logical, inevitable ends. He may not have intended for the book to be about censorship, but censorship is an unavoidable, inevitable outcome for a society in which most people are uneducated, uninformed, ambivalent ignoramuses. There will always be someone to take advantage of them and to make sure that advantage is defended.
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
When it comes to American history, I could do American independence - present day. Most public education stops at world war 2, you never really learn about Korea or vietnam. You might learn about the civil rights movement during black history month, but it wasn't well covered in my school. I was born in 1979. I've had to educate myself about stagflation that happened in the 70, along with the geopolitical events that helped stagflation, which includes british and american usurping iranian sovergnty to install a dictator that looked favorably upon capitalists oil interests, which brought me to the iran hostage crisis, which eventually gave way to a war between iraq and iran and the contra scandal. The shit Reagan and his officials got up to is insane, and Reagan managed to maintain enough deniability and have fall guys to keep from being impeached. There was a halfhearted attempt with H.Res.370 — 98th Congress (1983-1984) to Impeach President Reagan of the high crime or misdemeanor of: (1) ordering the invasion of Grenada, in violation of the Constitution and certain treaty obligations; and (2) preventing news coverage of such invasion. There was another attempt for the contra scandal. I'm old enough to remember the Berlin wall coming down. I lived through Kuwait, Iraq invasions, Tiananmen Square massacre, 9/11 and the bin laden hunt, Clinton deregulation of telecoms, yugoslavian civil war, 2000 dot com bubble recession, 2008 housing bubble recession, covid, and trump installed as president to enable facism/techno feudulism . . . we didn't start the fire.
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I can't wait to read the New Aeao Version of the Holy Bible.
I thought of making a YouTube series where I summarize the whole bible like that lol book by book.
I also regularly summarize history to my kids like that. You should hear my Texas independence story lol
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Fair, but the context that they are not real historical events is critical.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I’d argue if you taught someone history and never mentioned the Bible you’ve left out an important chunk of history.
Besides it’s about as whimsical and fantastical as all history of that time period was.
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
"Ok kids the last 5000 years were just an endless string of dick waving contests. They said that we had to knew history so we wouldn't repeat the same errors of the past but that was a fucking lie. Now who's up for some science?"
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How would you prove that your books reflect the true history?
Ok, I see what you mean. Counterpoint: how could/would anyone? If someone wanted to have "faith" enough they could feasibly handwave away anything that didn't jive with what they wanted the past to be. And in a situation where cross referencing would be nigh on impossible? I mean....I've got nothing. "Trust me bro."
