Our species created about 5 billion gigabytes of information from the dawn of time until 2003. Before long, we will create that much information many times per day, according to IBM. The problem: No one is doing enough to select and preserve the bits that really matter. One of the great paradoxes of the digital age is that we are producing vastly more information than ever before, but we are not very good at preserving knowledge in digital form for the long haul.
If you were airdropped, blindfolded, into a strange town and given nothing but a bus ticket, to where would you ride that bus? You might be surprised to learn that there’s only one good answer, and that’s the public library. The library is the public living room, and if ever you are stripped of everything private—money, friends and orientation—you can go there and become a human again. Of course, you don’t have to be homeless to use a library, but that’s the point. You don’t have to be anyone in particular to go inside and stay as long as you want, sit in its armchairs, read the news, write your dissertation, charge your phone, use the bathroom, check your email, find the address of a hotel or homeless shelter. Of all the institutions we have, both public and private, the public library is the truest democratic space.