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April 24, 2007
Instapundit, Wikiquote, and Nineteen Eighty-Four
Apparently, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit is having some problems with WikiQuote. Namely that, when he linked to a quote attributed to Sigmund Freud, it promptly disappeared, or, more accurately, moved down to the "misattributed" section of WikiQuote. This is the blessing and the curse of Wiki. Because anyone can edit it, at any point in time, you can't link to a WikiQuote with any degree of certainty that other people will see what you linked to.
Somewhat flummoxed by the ephemeral nature of the web in general, and of Wikiquote in particular, Glenn disabused himself of the notion that the internet could be trusted as a final arbiter of the validity of the quote, and went to the library to check out the quote in print.
"MORE STILL: I went to the library to look the Freud reference up myself. The quote above doesn't appear on p. 33 as cited. Instead, there is what's seen below, which appears right after an account of a dream in which a woman tries to unsheathe a dagger to kill herself, only to awaken and find she's tugging on her husband's penis:"
And, it struck me how utterly the internet has failed us in some ways. Namely, in the failure of the persistence of memory. When push came to shove, Glenn walked into a library and put his hands on a book to see what the book really said, because, presumably, he'd lost confidence in the teleprompter altogether. Of course, this got me to thinking about Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth.
"[snip]Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it's in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don't know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories.[snip]" - George Orwell : Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part 2, Chapter 5
Posted by Rob Kiser on April 24, 2007 at 12:58 AM
Comments
I'm not sure I understand the point of not finding something accurately portrayed by Wikipedia. It has been known from day 1 that anyone can add to or change any definition at any time, thus by the very nature of the beast, it is certain to at times contain inaccuracies, to say the least. BTW, thanks for the enlightening discourse straight from Freud's....mouth.
Posted by: sl on April 29, 2007 at 10:04 PM