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People say that if public libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today as a new thing, they'd be found illegal. I agree that they've sort of lost the
by greyface- 3y ago
People say that if public libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today as a new thing, they'd be found illegal.
I agree that they've sort of lost the plot by taking this digital lending stuff seriously.
- MattGaiser 3y agoI imagine today you would have libraries, but they would be like Netflix with maybe some small physical outposts in really major cities. So instead of the Seattle Library, it would be the some big tech nonprofit at best that would lisence content in bulk.
- sneak 3y agoIt’s the same with search engines. Look how the news aggregation business has shaken out.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> People say that if public libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today as a new thing, they'd be found illegal ARPANET was gracefully turned over, for the most part, to the commons, as was GPS. Public libraries are a millenium old as a concept [1], but only half a century (EDIT: millenium) old as a continuous practice [2]. We're not at the tail end of a collective-action halcyon; we're in the centre of it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Knowledge [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library
- markatto 3y agoA half century? Surely that must be a typo?
- geraldwhen 3y agoWhy? People have been illiterate for most of human history. So even if libraries existed, they could not be used.
- _djo_ 3y agoI think the OP meant ‘half a millennium’.