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NO CITATION ALERT! On 26 November 2012 01:00, Adrian Midgley <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was > said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding > ramifications below. > > The Ministsry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of > the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the > film and radio carried the process further. > > The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of > Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, > plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, > instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric > poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a > Newspeak dictionary. > > Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the > Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into > a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or > news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to > alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of > Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, > Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would > agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was > applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, > posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to > every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold > any political or ideological significance. > > When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards > him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He > dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate > issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a > few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles > or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary > to rectify. > > In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of > the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the > left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy > reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire > grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits > existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not > only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some > reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any > document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of > waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap > of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be > whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which > were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building. > > As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his > speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and > pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was > as nearly as possible unconsicious, he crumpled up the original > message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into > the memory hole to be devoured by the flames. > > What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did > not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all > the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular > number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would > be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy > placed on the files in its stead. > > In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day > in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the > names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered > never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or > thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in > the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, > were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of > jobs. > > There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography > experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of > photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, > its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill > in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of > books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories > where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces > where the original copies were destroyed. > > And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing > brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of > policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should > be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of > existence. > > > -- > Adrian Midgley http://www.defoam.net/ >