Read Only Windows

Once upon a time, a photograph was proof that something was real. And then trick photography came along, and today anyone can PhotoShop an image. A photo thus stopped being a proof of something being real. This blog talks of this transition of things from being absolute proof to no-longer-a-guaranteed-proof.

 

History, of course, is the most notorious example how “memories” change with time. He cites a fairly recent event as an example: who do you think contributed the most to the fall of Nazi Germany? Such a poll was conducted in France right after World War II – and it found that the USSR was accepted as most instrumental (57% - USSR, 20% - USA). That was 1945. By 1994, the same survey, again in France, found a very different verdict (23% - USSR, 49% - USA):

“Ask the same question about history several times, and it becomes meta-history. This survey caught live footage of collective memory being overwritten by the victors.”

And remember, this happened in democratic France:

“It didn’t require a totalitarian power deliberately distorting history to manipulate the masses. But the masses were still manipulated somehow.”

 

The blog says there is a window of time where we come up with a way to record something all the way till the time others figure a way to fake it. He calls this window of time the “read only window” – a period where the recording/detection system cannot be faked. The recording system can be treated as incontrovertible proof only during this read only window.

 

Photos, for example, had a read only window of about 50 years, before it became possible to do trick photos and edit photos. Videos had a much longer read only window -  it wasn’t easy to fake videos, until a few decades back.

 

Voice plus videos is not easy to fake for the layman, but the tech is certainly there now, which means that too has passed its read only window. Genetics was incontrovertible, until recently. But now it’s possible to edit genes, so it can’t be taken as absolute proof anymore.

 

Therefore, says the author, we can use something as evidence only during its read only window. After that, we should be cautious. On the plus side, we can compare the before and after views from the read only window. The difference would serve as a reminder of how much distortion happens by those in power, those who re-write the history books, or how the collective common view changes its “memories” of what happened in the past based on some new value system of the present…

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