Decoding the Tavistock letter: Dickens and ‘Victorian media management’

http://web.archive.org/web/20220211123708/https://dickenscod... is working if you can't access the article.

Also—recent and related:

Cracking Charles Dickens’ code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30265322 - Feb 2022 (2 comments)

Computer assisted hermeneutics, etymology and archival research make for fascinating research. But when we read (too?) deeply into what some historical figure "really meant" they're obviously not around to defend or correct. That can lead to some wild revisionism.

These may be good or bad. We end up with 'alternative' interpretations of what were once solid historical characters.

Dickens was _both_ a compassionate writer/social critic, and a hard businessman. Not necessarily contradictory qualities.

Careful analysis shows that much of Nietzsche's later work was pieced together by his sister to further her own political aims.

Machiavelli's 'Prince' was very possibly written ironically as "whistle-blowing" on the Medici family who effectively held him under comfortable house arrest while monitoring his writing. On the surface "The Prince" appears to flatter the ruling classes, but in truth excoriates those who tortured and bullied him.

Computers can be really useful in linking these fragments together, something pioneer Ted Nelson was very into.