Palinistas Bring Back the Memory Hole -- Which, It Turns Out, Is Everywhere [Update]

When former Alaskan governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin badly mangled her retelling of Paul Revere's ride, there was immediate scoffing on the part of her opponents. Then came the wave of those who claimed that Palin knew details of history that her critics didn't. Finally, Palin insisted that her version was factually correct.

And of course it wasn't long before this war of words spilled onto Wikipedia. Over the weekend, there were apparently more than a dozen attempts to edit the Paul Revere page to make the account of the midnight ride agree with Palin's version. And that, in a nutshell, is one of the dangers of the online realm, where everything is electronic and malleable: History could disappear, much as George Orwell described in 1984.

Mental frameworks
Was Palin wrong? Yes, because Revere did not set out to warn the British of anything but, rather, to warn well-known rebel leaders. Were most of her critics right? No, because Americans often assume that the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem had an accurate account of events the night of Revere's ride, which it didn't. There were dozens of people riding that night, and a good thing too -- the British actually captured Revere.

The attempts to modify Wikipedia immediately spawned conspiracy theories. Were Palin loyalists changing the Revere page to make their idol look good? Could it have been Palin's own staff? Or did detractors want to make Palin look as though her camp had tried to change history to make it agree with her?

Wikipedia actually seems to have a reasonably full account of the event, but that doesn't matter much. We live in a climate where far too many people are focused on whatever it is they want to believe, which makes it easy to assume that contrary facts are either mistakes or purposeful attempts to mislead. (Researchers in cognitive theory like George Lakoff , who examines the political implications, have begun to point some of this out.)

When frameworks and digital documents collide
That very old inclination today combines with three new trends:

• Crowdsourcing -- This not only includes obvious examples like Wikipedia, but also indirect forms, such as corporations tracking public sentiment on social networks and making decisions based on the result.
• The shift from paper publishing to digital -- As material moves online, society begins to lose a permanent informational record that can't easily be redacted or rewritten.
• Ease of editing -- Powerful software has made it almost a trivial task for anyone to alter any sort of digital record, whether text, image, sound, or video.

At one time, people looked to periodical and books as documents of record. Of course, the printed information could be wrong or even intentionally recast. But, as Orwell suggested with his Ministry of Truth, trying to track down and change every copy of a document is an enormous task, and creating replacements slanted the way you want, even larger.

But changing electronic documents can be trivial. Even complex edits on images take only a fraction of the time they once did.

Intellectual freefall
What happens when people change documents and leave them? Future audiences may well assume that they are still valid. If someone can't alter the original, it's still easy to take a copy, alter that, and disseminate it through social networks, blogs, and other mechanisms.

Suddenly, the concept of shared past and fixed references disappears. What if the picture of Rep. Anthony Weiner had been a plant? Some would still believe it to be real. If there's anything embarrassing in the official Palin emails set to be disclosed on Friday, you can count on someone to dispute their accuracy. And then there are always the Andrew Breitbarts of the world, who can edit video to highlight what someone said, but, by removing the context, change or even reverse the meaning of a discussion, a speech or an event.

[I was remiss in forgetting to include such other examples as news organizations retouching photographs and bloggers changing content in posts without indicating that they've done so.]

Checking links, searching for originals, and providing forensic analysis isn't practical for anyone, even as the very proliferation of information that makes it impossible also makes it necessary. The Web's long memory can trip people. And yet, we've arrived at a time when virtually anyone can become Orwell's Winston Smith when he still acted in his official capacity and eliminated the past. The question of what was the past will become harder and harder to answer with assurance.

Related:

• Sarah Palin Shows How Social Media's Long Memory Can Trip You
• Nobody Reads What Your Company Posts -- and That's a Good Thing

Erik Sherman

Erik Sherman is a widely published writer and editor who also does select ghosting and corporate work. The views expressed in this column belong to Sherman and do not represent the views of CBS Interactive. Follow him on Twitter at @ErikSherman or on Facebook.

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