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There is no shortage of forgettable anythings. If that was your point, it's a poor one. If you could predict ahead of time what might be valued in the future,
by catalogia 7y ago
There is no shortage of forgettable anythings. If that was your point, it's a poor one.
If you could predict ahead of time what might be valued in the future, then you could discard the rest. But you cannot do that, since you are not from the future. Scraps of data once thrown away as mundane are now valued in the present by researchers; there is no reason to believe this won't continue to be true into the future. Even your poorly contrived example of mundane data was debunked easily by another commenter.
Keep what can reasonably be kept, and let future researchers worry about filtering it. Preemptive filtering will only deprive future researchers of data they'll desire for reasons you cannot presently fathom.
- emodendroket 7y agoI took the claim to be that there was something inherent about books that made them more enduring than other forms of media, which just isn't really true. Anyway, libraries, among others, make these kinds of decisions all the time, because they don't have infinite space for books (hey, here's another reason ebooks might be valuable).