[wosb88]

When I am in that type of mood I just head to my huge uni library and randomly pick a book. No unnecessary jabbering from the chimp troupe to deal with, and no wading thro all sorts of scams, advertising, self promotion etc. Todays internet just doesnt match a nice library.

[codpiece]

If I could give you a thousand upvotes, I would. I have spent countless hours in libraries exploring the stacks, absolutely everything was at my fingertips. Nothing can compare.

[lazyhummingbird]

This is why I was so excited in the early days of Google Books. The digitalization of most written human knowledge would have created a modern Library of Alexandria, a sprawling, perfectly catalogued archive. An open API would make it so you could walk through in a metaverse platform, or scroll through by section, shelf, and spine. A bot librarian could guide blind users through and read books for them, either via BrailleNote or voice assistant.

Instead, copyright turned Google Books into a worse version of Amazon's "look inside" feature, depriving the internet of immeasurable substance.