Often, this supposedly redundant data is useful in ways current society can't fathom. Millions of photos of the Mona Lisa taken over decades won't tell you much

Often, this supposedly redundant data is useful in ways current society can't fathom. Millions of photos of the Mona Lisa taken over decades won't tell you much new about the Mona Lisa. But it will tell you a lot about changes in camera technology over that time. Also, the long tail is long. There are whole cultures and subcultures that would be completely forgotten if not for archives. At Defcon 19, Jason Scott gave a talk titled Archive Team: A Distributed Presentation of Service Attack[1]. In it, he explains why this data is important. As you rightly point out, the vast majority of it is boring and useless. It matters to no one but the author and their friends. But some of it is weird or funny, and a tiny bit of it is pure historical gold. The early days of usenet, for example, contain tons of interesting conversations involving people who are now prominent. Thanks to these archives, we can get a better picture of these people's lives than in earlier times. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog