[iandanforth]

If true this is basically unforgivable. The wanton destruction of history is the stuff of the Third Reich and the Taliban. You simply cannot profess to care about knowledge, culture, or civilization while destroying the physical manifestations of the same.

[pfdietz]

Yes, actually you can. The fetish of physical book worship is a fossil of an age when information storage and retrieval was much harder.

[BoxOfRain]

I strongly disagree with this take, a book might remain readable thousands of years from now but very few if not zero of our digital data formats likely will. We shouldn't be so quick to throw away diversity in the way information which may be useful for future generations is stored for the long term.

[pfdietz]

Paper doesn't easily survive for thousands of years.

You know that pleasant used bookstore smell? It's paper slowly decomposing.

[BoxOfRain]

I'd be willing to bet that there's a lot more readable paper from thousands of years ago than there will be readable digital data from today in thousands of years. Digital information has to be actively preserved in every case, whereas paper can be passively preserved in some cases.

[pfdietz]

Texts from thousands of years ago survive only because they were repeatedly copied. There are some extreme examples like the Dead Sea Scrolls but they are the exception.

Modern acid-free paper might last 1000 years; 500 is more typical. Acid paper breaks down in less than a century.

Parchment was so expensive it was often scraped and reused; old texts can sometimes be recovered after being overwritten (palimpsests).