Tau'Ri history is notable for the numerous accounts of miraculous works attributed to religious figures, especially when those accounts were put into writing only after the religious figure has died; perhaps years, decades, or even centuries afterwards.
And there will, of course, be a lot of that. Several billion lives for 3000 years -- obviously a lot of them won't be documented. Except in tax records, voting lists, genealogies and that sort of thing.
Some present-day knowledge preservations projects address that very problem.
I have and I really had no problems with it. Of course, the annotations were a great help.
With eveyone who can afford a PC able to put his side of the story out on the Internet? I doubt it. The problem is more likely to be an overabundance of versions.
Oh, you thought of that.
That ignores the existence of multiple projects aimed at deliberate preservation of knowledge against just that sort of decivilization. But more to the point, we are discussing the Traveller Universe here, aren't we? Otherwise we can postulate world-wide nuclear war or multiple hits by extinction-event meteors to wipe out any information not actually deposited on the Moon. Or we can postulate a 3000 year old obsesive-compulsive record-keeping world government.
How many cannibalism jokes has made it to contemporary archives? Googling 'cannibalism joke' gave me 250,000 hits.
That won't affect information stored in time capsules and similar projects.
But the encyclopedia articles about the historical use of the swastica will still be there.
But the book is still around for anyone to read and see for himself.
That's debatable, but there's no need to, since the essential part of the argument was contained in the next paragraph.
The combined canonical information about the history of Terra says so.
No, it wasn't:
Is there an argument buried in that last paragraph?
Sure to be. Likewise, there's sure to be others standing by and assiduously documenting the suppressions and distortions. System critics, hostile neighbors, perhaps even a few scholars.
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Whatever the Awful Solomani would like to revise, they're not going to be able to touch the files on Shululsish and Capital and Vland and Regina.
So, who is correct? The primary 'officially sanctioned' source, or the cranks who claim its been changed?... can you be certain after a few millenia has passed? All that will occur is the typical scholar's debate about who is right and who is wrong. The average citizen, especially on other worlds, won't give a crap and just continue to believe what they've been taught. and we all know how perfectly accurate textbooks in general education are.
For the same reason a government might put 'spin' on history today; to make themselves look good and make their foes look bad.
Can you be certain? The example you give was highly publicized as the work is required reading in many American schools, but what about works that are not considered classics. What about the 'bowdlerization' of works by line editors who determine what gets published or perhaps determine what gets archived?
They don't need to touch those files. The spin and revision and bowdlerizations are ongoing and have been for the all of the time in question. The files you think can't be touched have already been touched over the millenia. Nevermind that the Solomani controlled such things during the Rule of Man anyways. And the winner writes the history, or so its been said.
The same way historians determine which history of the Roman Empire is the most accurate, except that they would have far more primary sources about the 20th Century than we have about the Roman Empire.
Is the current version of the history of the Roman Empire different in Moscov and in Washington and in London and in Copenhagen and in Rome?
And your point is? The difference between common knowledge and what an expert can find out was brought up many posts ago.
I guess that's why the history of the Viking Era is so different in England and in Denmark. Except that I'm pretty sure they're not. I repeat, why would anyone bother to revise the history of the 20th Century? It's as relevant to the Rule of Man as the history of the Vikings is to us.
You still have the original works to compare with. There are encyclopedias and book collections being buried in time capsules. There are plans to put sattelites in orbit with knowledge repositories. The first Vilani spies to visit Earth will buy, beg, and steal all the encyclopedias they can get their hands on. The first Vilani tourists to visit peacefully will buy copies. Outposts and settlements from Earth will bring along vast library databases. The long range missions will set off with as comprehensive collection of Earth cultural information as can be crammed into the hulls. The AAB will send people with the express purpose of collecting all the knowledge they possibly can and put it in the next edition of their library data. The 25th (or whatever the number) Edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica will be spread from Dingir to Vland in the days of the Rule of Man.
No one is going to go through every encyclopedia held by every library and private book colelction and bowlderize it.
That's true.
That's not what I said at all, and I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from foisting opinions I haven't expressed on me. I've no doubt that there are plenty of revisionist histories in the 12th Century Imperial. But my TU (and, more importantly, the OTU as far as I interpret the available evidence) ALSO has a vast number of copies of encyclopedias, newspaper archives, biographies, travelogues, history books, etc. from the 20th Century surviving into the Classic Era. Just look at how much material survives from the days where books were handwritten and existed in only a few copies each. Compare that to the ease with which information is copied nowadays. Look at the deliberate efforts being made today to preserve information for posterity. Can you refute a single one of the examples I gave in my previous post, let alone all of them? No? Then don't tell me I'm being unreasonable.
And if a single library collection containing these lost books had been hidden away somewhere, those books wouldn't have been lost. Don't underestimate the power of the copy function.
