4 ms·

These sort of things are awesome, but always make me lament the loss of the Library of Alexandria. How much more would we know about the world, and what could w

These sort of things are awesome, but always make me lament the loss of the Library of Alexandria. How much more would we know about the world, and what could we be doing now if humanity still had access to that knowledge?

percept 11y ago
And it continues today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612382 We don't get this stuff back.
pm90 11y ago
Well, what's gone is gone. Luckily, we have the technology today to ensure the survival and propagation of all of humanity's collective knowledge now. While it was a big loss, I don't think, in the long run, humanity has been set back permanently due to that event.
- keithly 11y ago
  Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609022
- ZeroFries 11y ago
  Genuine question: what technologies allow us to organize and store information in the event of a massive catastrophe (meteors/comet, volcanoes, etc)?
jacobwcarlson 11y ago
This is a myth. There were many, many other excellent libraries around the world when the Library of Alexandria was burned down. It contained few if any unique works, and even those that may have been unique wouldn't have held details of unrecoverable technology. It was a great loss from a cultural knowledge standpoint, but it's not as if the sum of human knowledge literally went up in smoke. It's more akin to what ISIS is doing right now.