Terence McKenna's suggestion was "if a book is less than 100 years old, don't read it". I think it's a combination of "contemporary books will be from the swir

Terence McKenna's suggestion was "if a book is less than 100 years old, don't read it". I think it's a combination of "contemporary books will be from the swirl of life around you that already know, old books will be from a different culture and time and that difference is important" and "knowledge lost, from people who are no longer living". It would also have the test of time - Darwinian natural selection of information. Something we're missing when we want the internet to keep data forever, we should be letting data rot and be lost, taking ongoing action to keep it in the present is a vote for its importance, setting up a system which preserves information without effort is cheating the system and leaving us swimming in e-waste.