4 ms·
When I hear these stories of AI companies buying all the books, I think back to Kevin Kelly in 2008 or 2009. He talked about how books are less expensive than a
by criddell 2mo ago
When I hear these stories of AI companies buying all the books, I think back to Kevin Kelly in 2008 or 2009. He talked about how books are less expensive than at any other time in history and easier to buy and that could change so it makes sense to buy a lot of books.
> [...] I was near to the point of actually digitizing and getting rid of all my paper books.
> I was that close about five years ago, but then I had an
epiphany. I went to private library, and I realized that books
were never as cheap as they are today. They never will be as
cheap, and that there's some power about having these things in
paper always available, no batteries, never obsolete, and that if
you made a library now, you would never be able to make some
of these libraries in 50 years, so I decided to keep and to
cultivate this paper library as something that was going to be
powerful in the future.
I remember seeing photos of his library but can't find them anymore. This is the only thing I could find:
https://colossus.com/article/flounder-mode/ https://colossus.com/article/flounder-mode/
- breezybottom 2mo ago[flagged]
- criddell 2mo agoThe second paragraph in that story lays out the main bullets. He's worth paying attention to. For the past thirty years or so that I've been aware of him he's been more prescient than most.