by Charles Miller

Last week when I wrote here on the subject of eBooks being censored and sanitized it never once crossed my mind that this was a segue into a discussion of the future of online data storage. I bemoaned the fact that Puffin Books had unilaterally sanitized Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" along with other literary works to censor what the publisher now considers politically-incorrect language. Then all the electronic copies of the books disappeared, replaced by the "updated" versions so that nobody could buy or even see the original versions of those books any more.

If you care to look up the Wikipedia entry for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" you can read the history of the edits under the "Race, editing, and censorship" section. Here is where you can see for yourself a side-by-side sample of the original 1964 text as written by Roald Dahl, then the 1973 version with changes that the author himself made. If the original author chose to make such edits as changing "pure black" to "rosy-white" and "fuzzy head" to "hair was golden brown" then I suppose it could be argued that this was a continuation of the editing process, all by the original author.

What transpired in 2023, 33 years after the author Dahl had died, was something entirely different. You really need to view the Wikipedia page to see for yourself how the publisher took one section of 96 words then censored it down to 40 words in what many see as an act of vandalism. The troubling aspect of this is that today the sanitized version of the book is the only one available for purchase.

Perhaps, like me, you will find it reassuring that sometimes when we look down the maw of a dystopian future as was portrayed in George Orwell's "1984" there is a glimmer of hope that there will emerge some new and unanticipated innovation to save society. So what was I saying earlier about a segue into a discussion of the future of online data storage?

Warning: Here comes one of my over-simplified explanations that admittedly compromises thoroughness for the sake of brevity!

One such innovation was conceptualized decades ago and came to fruition in 2009. That was the creation of a workable blockchain. Blockchain is a decentralized digital database that securely records multiple copies of data across a network of many computers. Once any data are entered it becomes immutable and cannot be altered without consensus from the entire network.

Most people know of blockchain as it relates to crypto currency. Transactions must be audited and agreed upon by several computers on the network before any transaction can be recorded. But (BIG BUT) once recorded a transaction can only be changed if more than 50% of ALL the hundreds of thousands of computers on the blockchain network agree that there was a mistake that should be corrected. While it is theoretically possible, in the case of bitcoin there has never ever been a case in which 50% of the computers on the blockchain agreed to make a retroactive change to a confirmed transaction. A blockchain database is the closest thing we have to an immutable, unchangeable, permanent record.

Blockchain is not just for financial transactions because entire books; even libraries of books could be stored in the form of an online blockchain. I will be looking forward to the day when some computer programmer much smarter than I creates a literary blockchain to preserve the integrity of the written word. I would suggest that following the model of bitcoin, it needs to be easy enough for a relatively small group of readers to confirm the accuracy of a book to be preserved on the blockchain. But (another BIG BUT) it should require 50%+ of every one of the thousands or millions of people who bought or read the book to later approve going back to make changes to any book after it has been preserved. This is how the Winston Smiths of the future can be stopped from rewriting history.

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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