In [[George Orwell]]'s [[dystopia]]n [[novel]] ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]],'' a '''memory hole''' was a system of pipes for conveying documents to a furnace to be destroyed. It was chiefly used to destroy old versions of newspapers to hide the fact that the government had [[revisionism|rewritten history]].<ref>[https://webspace.utexas.edu/bighamds/LIN312/Files/Orwell-newspeak.pdf The Principles of Newspeak]</ref> Thus, in modern parlance, a memory hole is any means for eliminating inconvenient historical records. | In [[George Orwell]]'s [[dystopia]]n [[novel]] ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]],'' a '''memory hole''' was a system of pipes for conveying documents to a furnace to be destroyed. It was chiefly used to destroy old versions of newspapers to hide the fact that the government had [[revisionism|rewritten history]].<ref>[https://webspace.utexas.edu/bighamds/LIN312/Files/Orwell-newspeak.pdf The Principles of Newspeak]</ref> Thus, in modern parlance, a memory hole is any means for eliminating inconvenient historical records. |