When Robots Play Dice: The Flameless Fire – It’s Never Been Easier to Burn Books

Under the auspices of “being green,” we have given our printed word over to a cyber-medium that cannot be touched or felt or folded. Our information is as volatile as the authority protecting our storage devices. Eliminating a book or changing its text can be done by literally pressing a button -- without a fire or an erasure marking, without smoke, without evidence. Our data is ephemeral along with the web in which we weave it. This paper considers the current ease of censorship, and that the non-permanence of data and links can wreak havoc on our societal infra-structure if the wrong entities (human or machine) with the wrong motives have the control to determine its fate.