Will the digital world cause severance of history?

Author: Unnati Parekh Gujarat Law Society, Ahmedabad

Virtual world or also known as the artificial reality is an exciting platform where we can access a wide range of information and gain knowledge and experience about things we are not aware of. But the sad truth is that the digital world has severed our lives to an extent that we fail to understand the spirit of the facts. Each and every fact, given is not accurate and is misappropriation of historical evidence and thus violates our rights to relevant information and ruptures history. This, in my opinion, is a mere modification of information amongst websites where everything we get to read is a grayscale picture, where white is what we don’t know and a tint of black is what we will never get to know. The only thing is the grey coloured picture of facts that may be falsified and inaccurate appearance on websites.

Now that every website has the same information in different variations, what is relevant and true to best of our knowledge is suspicious and thus violates our right to information on historical topics and sources of information. History is a happening of the past and the implications of virtual world modifications would eradicate the real history and will uproot the potential aspect of getting to know the history. The digital preservation of history is a worthy option for saving the databases and securing that such vital past events do not fade away from the real world.

In my personal opinion, the history which is written in manuscripts, leaves, books and clothes should be preserved in museums for the decades to come and historic facts should not be hauled on internet platforms where any person or entity can misread and misinterpret the value of the information contained within. As we all are aware of the fact that Indian history is not vague documentation of ideas but past reality, and so we need to consider it as a primary source of interests of our society. There are many instances where we find individuals struggling to find the best information about historical happenings, personalities and kingdoms. This is one of the great paradoxes of the digital era as everything we find on the web is fragile and undermind reality. Simply putting it as history can be destroyed in seconds as one particular piece of information is copied and later silently modified to ensure historical preservations but it also gives rise to its veracity over other platforms.

Even the archaeological departments give us the information from the research and local investigation which is actually mixed stories about any event conveyed by locals living in the area. The official government-regulated handles should be able to constrain the ability of their citizenry to such absurd information and it should not give hype to public outreach of falsified data across platforms.

Also, we find that the virtual world has given us the power to create content and even alter the data access and this will result in a chaotic debate in future as no one will be aware of historical evidence and thus it will disappear from the public access. Books that are a part of the educational program will provide only information that is believed to be original and can be found inappropriate because of the digital influence.

Paradoxically, this digital world has made it easier for us to access the happenings of the historical times but has made it more simple to falsify and rather delete the actual history. It is to be believed, that what we know and perceive is not accurate but a digital representation of facts. In the developing digital world, it is about proving to ourselves that everything that we possess today is a result of the historic events and so preserving it is more essential rather than making up vague web stories about it.

It is to be understood that today in the internet era we need to consider that the right to create content is important but that is used by millions of users and so the content should be relevant and not misappropriation of facts in the curtain of good faith.