OK Ill take this on.
> > I now suspect that within 20 years, *all* the information currently found
> > in print-only format will be no more useful in that form than the
> > collection of mostly sermons in the stacks at Yale. spike
>
> Karsten Bänder wrote: ...If we assume that even the most
> insignificant book holds at least a bit of useful information, why do we
> risk the destruction of it by not replicating it's contents?
Karsten, the problem is that the useful information in that form is so diffuse as to make it not worth the effort to search the text to find the jewels of wisdom.
> To me, one of the greatest disasters was the burning of the Great Library at
> Alexandria. Humanity lost - in one night - the intellectual work of several
> hundreds or thousands of wise men.
Granted this was a sad loss. However...
> What would we know today if we had this information?
We would know a lot about how people in the old days thought.
What would we learn about anthropology? Nothing! We know
far more about ancient humans than would have been recorded
in the library at Alexandria.
> ...The library of the Vatikan in Rome still
> holds one of the most important libraries of the world....
I beg to differ. Theologians might feel the loss should that library burn, but I suspect it would have almost no impact on the lives or the thinking of our society. Religious thinkers, especially ancient ones, offer little or no guidance in the questions we are now facing, such as:
> BTW: The burning of books reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 ...
Karsten, we have a much greater challenge than the accidental or intentional burning of books: preventing data from being lost by changing technology. Anyone have any floppy discs? How about the old 5 inch floppies? Can you still read them? spike