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Why would anybody want this information destroyed. Protected until the person is long dead sure, but destroyed? A lot can be learned by seeing what experiences

Why would anybody want this information destroyed. Protected until the person is long dead sure, but destroyed? A lot can be learned by seeing what experiences someone has had. Would you not want to read what Plato had read? How about Jefferson or Tesla?

nkrisc 11y ago
While I tend to agree with you, your position implies we possess an inherent right to that information. Do we inherently have the right to review all your private information, even after death?
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  Of course; dead people have no rights. It couldn't be otherwise. You may be thinking of the courtesy extended to the living heirs of dead people.
  - nkrisc 11y ago
    I spoke nothing of the rights of the dead. I asked if we (the living) possessed the right to view the private information of the deceased by mere virtue of the fact they are deceased.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Because there's a huge amount of paper you might want to keep. And storing paper costs a lot of money. It takes up a lot of space, and has to be kept dry within a reasonable temperature range. Academic libraries spend tidy sums on climate control to keep their books from rotting away. It also has to be indexed and filed so it's possible to find what you're looking for. If you do it properly, you end up with something like this: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ So the costs are non-trivial. And most people would consider library loan records trivial information. So there are good economic and practical reasons for throwing them out. Besides, it's unlikely Plato, Jefferson, or Tesla did most of their reading in libraries. (Karl Marx did, but he was probably an exception.)
krapp 11y ago
I doubt patrons ever agreed, even implicitly, that should they ever become famous their reading habits would become a matter of public record, and maybe given to the newspapers. These records were never meant to be preserved in perpetuity for scholars and historians to pick through, so of course they aren't. Should the stores where Haruki Murakami shopped also save all of his receipts so we can know his dietary habits as well?
- maus42 11y ago
  However, would they had been agreed to that some future historian century after their lifetime would spend their career studying their reading lists, if they once turned out important enough? Or that this data would be used to research what kind of books people read, for some obscure cultural history research project? Heck, many people keep personal diaries, and most surely would object to people reading them without their permission while they are alive. On the other hand, their diaries are prime sources on given person's life to biographers, which is one reason some people keep them. I understand literature and history departments at universities love this kind of sources.
  - krapp 11y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. Franz Kafka wanted all of his unpublished manuscripts to be burned after his death, but that didn't happen.
makmanalp 11y ago
Think about the reverse though - the days where one could be branded as unpatriotic communist for reading Marx in the US are not a long time ago!
- e12e 11y ago
  In the documentary "Black Power Mixtape" Kweli mentions that he's called in to chat with the FBI because he listened to Stokely Carmichael speeches: "Carmichael’s words continue to resonate 40 years later, says Kweli, who was stopped in an airport after 9/11, by “the FBI, the CIA, and the TSA,” because the government knew that he had been listening to Carmichael’s speeches. What these agencies and other authorities who remain fearful of black power miss, says Kweli, is that Carmichael, a “fiery speaker, “was “just a regular dude.” Exhibit A, for Kweli, is the interview with Mabel Carmichael, where the son respects his mother’s strength and dignity." http://www.popmatters.com/review/148310-the-black-power-mixtape-1967-1975/ http://www.popmatters.com/review/148310-the-black-power-mixt... (Highly recommend the movie, as a wonderful window into the recent past)

nkrisc 11y ago

While I tend to agree with you, your position implies we possess an inherent right to that information. Do we inherently have the right to review all your private information, even after death?

thaumasiotes 11y ago
Of course; dead people have no rights. It couldn't be otherwise. You may be thinking of the courtesy extended to the living heirs of dead people.
- nkrisc 11y ago
  I spoke nothing of the rights of the dead. I asked if we (the living) possessed the right to view the private information of the deceased by mere virtue of the fact they are deceased.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

Because there's a huge amount of paper you might want to keep. And storing paper costs a lot of money. It takes up a lot of space, and has to be kept dry within a reasonable temperature range. Academic libraries spend tidy sums on climate control to keep their books from rotting away. It also has to be indexed and filed so it's possible to find what you're looking for. If you do it properly, you end up with something like this: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ So the costs are non-trivial. And most people would consider library loan records trivial information. So there are good economic and practical reasons for throwing them out. Besides, it's unlikely Plato, Jefferson, or Tesla did most of their reading in libraries. (Karl Marx did, but he was probably an exception.)

krapp 11y ago

I doubt patrons ever agreed, even implicitly, that should they ever become famous their reading habits would become a matter of public record, and maybe given to the newspapers. These records were never meant to be preserved in perpetuity for scholars and historians to pick through, so of course they aren't. Should the stores where Haruki Murakami shopped also save all of his receipts so we can know his dietary habits as well?

maus42 11y ago
However, would they had been agreed to that some future historian century after their lifetime would spend their career studying their reading lists, if they once turned out important enough? Or that this data would be used to research what kind of books people read, for some obscure cultural history research project? Heck, many people keep personal diaries, and most surely would object to people reading them without their permission while they are alive. On the other hand, their diaries are prime sources on given person's life to biographers, which is one reason some people keep them. I understand literature and history departments at universities love this kind of sources.
- krapp 11y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. Franz Kafka wanted all of his unpublished manuscripts to be burned after his death, but that didn't happen.

makmanalp 11y ago

Think about the reverse though - the days where one could be branded as unpatriotic communist for reading Marx in the US are not a long time ago!

e12e 11y ago
In the documentary "Black Power Mixtape" Kweli mentions that he's called in to chat with the FBI because he listened to Stokely Carmichael speeches: "Carmichael’s words continue to resonate 40 years later, says Kweli, who was stopped in an airport after 9/11, by “the FBI, the CIA, and the TSA,” because the government knew that he had been listening to Carmichael’s speeches. What these agencies and other authorities who remain fearful of black power miss, says Kweli, is that Carmichael, a “fiery speaker, “was “just a regular dude.” Exhibit A, for Kweli, is the interview with Mabel Carmichael, where the son respects his mother’s strength and dignity." http://www.popmatters.com/review/148310-the-black-power-mixtape-1967-1975/ http://www.popmatters.com/review/148310-the-black-power-mixt... (Highly recommend the movie, as a wonderful window into the recent past)