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"Writing about the future, I have a vested interest in there being a future for me to write about."
- John Brunner

Memory Hole  
  A receptacle for unwanted documents.  

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices... in 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 hold 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.
Technovelgy from 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four), by George Orwell.
Published by Secker & Warburg in 1948
Additional resources -

See also rewriting history from the same novel.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
  More Ideas and Technology by George Orwell
  Tech news articles related to 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
  Tech news articles related to works by George Orwell

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