3 ms·

For me, that hope was realized, we have access to most of the books in existence, incredible projects of knowledge sharing, and countless other resources to lea

For me, that hope was realized, we have access to most of the books in existence, incredible projects of knowledge sharing, and countless other resources to learn any subject you want. If the majority of people don't want to use this, but instead just want to yell about politics and the news cycle, that's their problem and doesn't really diminish the achievements of the web.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> For me, that hope was realized, we have access to most of the books in existence As long as you are willing to enter a legal gray area, you can get access to some interesting books; but these are still an insanely small fraction of "most of the books in existence".
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Libgen is great. :P
- pessimizer 2y ago
  Looking up arbitrary ebooks from my library of a couple thousand physical books (accumulated over 40 years from obscure places) on shadow libraries, I get something like a 90% hit rate. They're almost all English, however, but there are enough nonenglish illicit sources to make me think that "most" is probably right on the money. Also, tbh, from the 10% I can't find maybe 1/5 of those is worth reading. Unfindable stuff tends to be the dregs, although plenty of the dregs are also findable. Recently got into late 19th century Mexican literature, and I find virtually everything I look for. I can find books from small political presses who may have printed only 100 copies. Here's another kink that I have, which basically would have been my most self-indulgent dream as a child: I can look at the ads for other books that are in the backs of 50-200 year-old books, or listings of the rest of the books in a series, and find those books instantly. Between shadow libraries, actual libraries, hobbyist public domain wranglers, etc, it's hard not to find a book.
- nathias 2y ago
  For example, I can read Baumgarten's metaphysics in original Latin on archive.org, before the internet people had to take months to reserve and arrange for the libraries to send them books, if it was possible at all. This means I can go through all the literature I think could maybe be important and just check and read or move on. For scholarly work, this makes such a big difference that it makes me think the pre-internet PhDs are incomparable with post-internet ones.
chaosist 2y ago
Exactly. I got online in 1995 and the promise was kept by the internet. I have taken so many free classes from Ivy league schools along with all the books, pdfs, tutorials, physical books I would have never found otherwise. What I highly overestimated was people's thirst for knowledge. I really thought that by this time I would be unemployable as the average young person would just be so learned that I wouldn't be able to keep up. The advantage of growing up with the internet would be just so huge. I would have never guessed that the average young person instead almost has a type of learning disability from being addicted to political nonsense, stupid videos and gossip. Everything is there from what I envisioned in 1995 though. It is just this useless, pernicious aspect dwarfs what I envisioned then in terms of popularity.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

> For me, that hope was realized, we have access to most of the books in existence As long as you are willing to enter a legal gray area, you can get access to some interesting books; but these are still an insanely small fraction of "most of the books in existence".

johnisgood 2y ago
Libgen is great. :P
pessimizer 2y ago
Looking up arbitrary ebooks from my library of a couple thousand physical books (accumulated over 40 years from obscure places) on shadow libraries, I get something like a 90% hit rate. They're almost all English, however, but there are enough nonenglish illicit sources to make me think that "most" is probably right on the money. Also, tbh, from the 10% I can't find maybe 1/5 of those is worth reading. Unfindable stuff tends to be the dregs, although plenty of the dregs are also findable. Recently got into late 19th century Mexican literature, and I find virtually everything I look for. I can find books from small political presses who may have printed only 100 copies. Here's another kink that I have, which basically would have been my most self-indulgent dream as a child: I can look at the ads for other books that are in the backs of 50-200 year-old books, or listings of the rest of the books in a series, and find those books instantly. Between shadow libraries, actual libraries, hobbyist public domain wranglers, etc, it's hard not to find a book.
nathias 2y ago
For example, I can read Baumgarten's metaphysics in original Latin on archive.org, before the internet people had to take months to reserve and arrange for the libraries to send them books, if it was possible at all. This means I can go through all the literature I think could maybe be important and just check and read or move on. For scholarly work, this makes such a big difference that it makes me think the pre-internet PhDs are incomparable with post-internet ones.

chaosist 2y ago

Exactly. I got online in 1995 and the promise was kept by the internet. I have taken so many free classes from Ivy league schools along with all the books, pdfs, tutorials, physical books I would have never found otherwise. What I highly overestimated was people's thirst for knowledge. I really thought that by this time I would be unemployable as the average young person would just be so learned that I wouldn't be able to keep up. The advantage of growing up with the internet would be just so huge. I would have never guessed that the average young person instead almost has a type of learning disability from being addicted to political nonsense, stupid videos and gossip. Everything is there from what I envisioned in 1995 though. It is just this useless, pernicious aspect dwarfs what I envisioned then in terms of popularity.