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?
The government doesn’t control all the information. I’ll still have my offline copy of Wikipedia, on my phone, that contains a lot of the world’s history. Apart from that I just remember some mythology, some stuff about the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Incas, British, Americans, and Indians, plus a reasonable understanding of WW2 and the holocaust, plus various historical events that have happened in my lifetime.
This hypothetical is assuming you are in an active warzone (think like 1984’s world) and have no time to find your stuff, or you just accidentally drop it while running away from government troops.
You just had to run until you find a safe place (like a secret underground bunker or something) and have nothing on you beside your memories.
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.
Congratulations, you’ve just written a quarter of the plot of the Book of Eli with Denzel Washington
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)
A lot less than I think I could
This is why books are so important. Real, physical, paper books. The scenario you are proposing is precisely what Fahrenheit 451 is about.
How do I print the 100GB English Wikipedia?
How do I even transport something that big without the authoritarian governmwnt noticing?
the catch is that the Fahrenheit 451 scenario nowadays just require a storage device to fail… very ecological, Greta must approve it
This is not much of a hypothetical scenario. History is being written with a bias or outright misrepresentation and has been forever.
I literally have multiple copies of Wikipedia offline. Including one on a USB stick.
I don’t think it would ever be possible to delete all records of history short of blowing up the entire planet at which point its quite moot.
I’d remember that the Undertaker threw Mankind off the top of Hell In A Cell and through the commentator’s table.
In 1998 no less. Also, he plummeted 16 feet! Bah God!
The clear soda craze was the defining point of the 1990s. That’s about it.
There were troll dolls too.
And garbage pail kids
“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.
Dance off for hambe
That’s the ending of Fahrenheit 451!
For me, the risk is remembering things that are factually wrong. With no one to correct me, I would be worried about getting stuff wrong the whole time
I wouldn’t bother with history at that point. History only matters when we can rely on there being a future. And if the big oops happens, all that matters is raw survival and STEM (with the pure M being optional).
rotates chair to glance at collection of hard copy encyclopedias & encyclopedic dictionary
I can recall the gist of European history from year 900 through 1850ish. Then in a lot more detail after that. Outside of Europe my history knowledge is mostly a subsection of European colonialism.
That is hosted in the USA and um…
checks news
future not looking so bright right now 😬
I have a stack of Encyclopedia Britannica in my parents storage.
I have a stack of the Animorphs in my attic. Yours is just speculative fiction.
…huh?
All records of history have been deleted.
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.
You can’t delete a book
“Hypothetically”
Quick question - did you have breakfast this morning?……
I probably can’t remember much aside my own countries history, and even if I wouldn’t be able to give exact years and such. Luckily the whole of English Wikipedia (text-only) is roughly 100GB so I would probably distribute the records or requested articles via the black market. Also, this is basically how people in Cuba get access to internet content.
