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Preserving Knowledge
How to send the best of our civilization into the future
When the library of Alexandria was accidentally torched by legionaries loyal to Julius Caesar in 48 BCE, a wealth of knowledge was lost. The continuous decline of the library over the next two centuries meant that more than 90% of knowledge known to classical scholars was lost forever.
Likewise we know nearly nothing about Egyptian civilization, Mesopotamian civilization, the Indus civilization, and even the more recent Aztec and Inca civilizations. When societies collapse the knowledge they amassed goes with them: their literature, their science, their history.
So imagine what would happen in the case of a worldwide collapse: nearly all our knowledge would be lost. Given the triumph of populism around the world the odds are that our global civilization will end within the next hundred years. It will be the first unified collapse in the history of our species. As such, the likelihood is that everything of value will be lost.
If our global civilization does fail in the next century or so, it could take more than a thousand years for humanity to regain the knowledge that makes today’s everyday miracles possible. As we are very likely indeed to tear ourselves apart in a mindless atavistic orgy of destruction, urged on by the infantile morons we’ve elected because we are just as…
