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> Has any book-burning movement in history actually succeeded in getting ride of the books? > Because I don't know of any Of course you haven't, by definition. We find out about the things that survive destruction, not the ones that don't. edit: As for the instinct to preserve knowledge, that's not all we have. We also have a profit-maximizing infection that spread to every organ, so to speak. Books printed today don't last very long. Heck, not even newspapers and tech companies give a crap about link rot! Archive.org is a team of volunteers. Wikipedia is very hit or miss, and the ego of some seems to override whatever "instinct" we might have real quick. So, frankly, I'm not seeing it. Even computing is rotting from under our hands. The Amiga came with schematics of the machine as part of the manual, while nowadays repair shops have to hunt for info. If companies were allowed, they'd each have their own incompatible charger cable, you bet. And let's not even talk about about 100MB applications that do 100KB things, because it's easier for the developer to never care about anything close to the machine and just use the bloated tool chain they already know. Recently I asked for a good (as in, other than "Microsoft wants you to") reason to use Win 11, and just got downvoted. Ever since Win 11 was announced I haven't gotten one answer to that question, ever. There's people who turn their nose up at it, and people who use it who don't want to talk about why. I could go on. > No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers. [..] An old and excellent book is frequently shelved for new and bad ones; which, written for the sake of money, wear a pretentious air and are much eulogised by the authors’ friends. In science, a man who wishes to distinguish himself brings something new to market; this frequently consists in his denouncing some principle that has been previously held as correct, so that he may establish a wrong one of his own. Sometimes his attempt is successful for a short time, when a return is made to the old and correct doctrine. These innovators are serious about nothing else in the world than their own priceless person, and it is this that they wish to make its mark. -- Arthur Schopenhauer |