I ran across an impressive book at the library the other day.  Here it is:

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq.
As a confessed book lover, the title obviously intrigued me.  I’ve spent a bit of time the last day or so reading through this work by Fernando Baez, a world authority on the history of libraries.  He was also a member of the UN committee investigating the destruction of the museums and libraries in Iraq in 2003.

The book chronicles how throughout history tyrants and governments have sought to change the past through the destruction of the written word.

The author postulates that, “…books are not destroyed as physical objects but as links to memory, that is, as one of the axes of identity of a person or community.  There is no identity without memory.”

That is an interesting point.  I think there is a lot of truth there.  Consider, whenever a group or nation tries to take over another, one of the first things they do is destroy the items that are based in culture and history.  The goal is to wipe out the past and supplant it with “new” memories.

Here’s the point of this post:  As we progess further and further along the digital pathway, more and more of our culture is being stored in digital format.  Todays works which could be tomorrows classics are produced now in bits of electrons residing on a computer somewhere.  What implications are there for future tyrannical governements in terms of destroying a society’s identity?  One day, will it be as easy as controlling the internet and poising a finger over the delete key?

If all of our knowledge is digital, would it be easier for our memory to be erased?