Libraries were invented because information was only available on printed (or hand written) books, which were very expensive and scarce resources.
Now information can be available almost literally for free and instantly, to anywhere. If the institutional inertia of libraries didn't exist today, would they really be invented as they are?
The modern plutocrat is mostly a strictly transactional affair, who has dumbed business down to resource extraction.
I became involved in my city's library system a few years ago when they did a branch expansion that I was initially opposed to for money reasons. I flipped and am now a library fan.
I discovered that it's an environment for learning, social interaction and collaboration. You have programs for little kids where they interact with books for the first time. The elementary kids start collaborating on computers and doing other programs. Older kids are building robots, reading manga, having fun in a meaningful, beneficial way.
The failed promise of the internet that I bought into in the 90s is that access to information will set you free. Yet we find ourselves dominated by propaganda via things like Facebook -- Internet is the new TV. The reality is that information in the context of a meaningful environment is the magic. The library adds value and context to information. It's a situation where the value is greater than the sum of the parts.
Would you count Project Gutenberg, archive.org or SciHub? I'd also add Bittorrent and other p2p networks as media libraries. I bet there is plenty of lesser known archives like http://web.textfiles.com/
But what you get on HN is curation, and a community of like minded people. The library is that in physical form, available to everyone.
They did reinvent them, but in the spirit of the times they're mostly located in neighborhoods that are already more educated, more wealthy, and already have public library access.
https://www.treehugger.com/culture/little-free-libraries-rai...
I have one and that idea seems insane to me. The book box to me is a nice landscaping feature, a place to drink coffee with my neighbors, a signal about my politics, a way for us to unload books & my attempt to get rad comics to school kids. I’d never correlate it to a public lending library.
Given that libraries are largely funded locally, should they not have existed, we would be seeking out the creation of more shared public spaces that don't require you to spend money to spend time there. These sorts of 3rd places are important, although I do agree that the modern plutocrat isn't the sort of person who is likely very safe when it comes to visiting these sorts of public spaces, and hence have an aversion to them.
If libraries didn't already exist, I can't imagine the copyright lobby allowing them to be invented.
Libraries legally own the material they lend out, and have the legal right to lend it. They exist because of copyright law, not in spite of it.
And if the "copyright lobby" (whatever that is) was so powerful, there are any number of things they could have stopped, like VCRs or photocopiers or even the internet itself.
There's nothing improved about the argument, it's just obfuscated better.
No. The internet almost always costs the individual money to access, unlike public libraries. That means the internet is less accessible to low income people.
Also public libraries have evolved into one of the main ways that many people access the internet. It's foolish to advocate replacing public libraries with something that the public libraries actually provide for many of their patrons.
Free: Transportation to go to your library (2x train ticket, or car + gas): minimum ~$5 / day so $60 a month, plus library card if not free
Instantly: ~30 minutes to go, 30 minutes to get back home, depending on where you live. Worst internet connection need a few seconds.
Anywhere: you have to physically go to the one library and hope you find the book you're looking for. Nowadays you have internet access pretty much anywhere.
so sure, that sucked in comparison, but no one was monetizing my activity. i didn't have to struggle against a suggestion machine that had decided I was in a different field. no one was showing me advertisements.
no question that digitizing and indexing the worlds information has been a huge benefit, but there isn't any fundamental reason why we had to invite all these sleezy business people into our lives in exchange. they just latched onto a new thing, seeped into any available crack, and presented themselves as part of the package.
a post internet library would be global, noncommercial, unfettered access to as many resources possible (hi Brewster).
A homeless person won't have an internet connection or a computer.
A poor person won't necessarily have a computer.
Internet in some rural areas is not just slow, but also spotty.
And they still have books.
It's also kind of sad that this logic is so prevalent with regards to software, films, music, etc.
Children's books would not exist with libraries. You'd probably find that without the library most of the deeper catalog for publishers would not be viable.
Libraries were formed to share very expensive printed books in a common space. Over the centuries, books and information became very cheap, and now mostly the common space remains.
It certainly has real value. Do we need to keep the pretense of the books as the real purpose for it?
That said, access to books is still a vital service. Not all printed publications are cheap, and not all books can be replaced by Wikipedia (even if you completely ignore fiction, as that argument does by necessity).
Max Headroom, episode ABC.1.3 "Body Bags":
Paula: "...what's that?"
Blank Reg: "It's a book!"
Paula: "Well, what's that?"
Blank Reg: "It's a non-volatile storage medium.
It's very rare. You should have one."
Books still work when the power goes out or the copyright cartels revoke - intentionally or not - your ereader's license. Widespread preservation of knowledge on non-volatile media is protection against future problems.
> Just this week, a woman stopped by our desk because she needed to be taught how to open a new tab in an internet browser. She returned a few minutes later and said, “Please write ‘stomach ache’ on this piece of paper for me. I don’t know to spell it.” The man waiting behind her had no idea how to open an internet browser to begin his first job search in years. I walked him through the process and helped him get to a job site. This was a few minutes of a 40-hour workweek.
> I can’t imagine where this woman and this man would go without the library. Would Amazon really be willing to help them with all of their needs free of charge?
Information is available “almost literally for free and instantly” to people who can afford a device that connects to the internet.
... and who have a sufficient working knowledge of how computers and the internet work in order to take advantage of that information.
In line with what you and others have said, what I've observed at the libraries I've been to is that the people who get the most value out of libraries are the people that would otherwise be left behind by technology. I don't think that's something we can or should dismiss out of hand just because I/we don't personally get a lot of value from them. That is, unless we want to develop an underclass of people shut out from the rest of society.
Immersed as we are in it, I think people forget that the internet is a skill. Finding things and filtering the results is the result of experience.
Brilliant. I foolishly bought some books recently. Where can I read them for free instead, apart from the library? Is this going to involve piracy? I'm not sure I'm really into that.
I'd love to see digital archives of all the books ever written, but we're not there yet.
Nevermind the fact that reading a physical book avoids much of the issues with blue light that screens produce
Libraries also gave net access for those without.
They probably wouldn't be invented as they are, but given those groups without access I would want them to be.
It's possible that libraries are the best way to do that but it's also possible that there are other, better ways.
When information is free having somewhere to study that information, that isn't your shared apartment, becomes more important. Having somewhere to meet people to talk about the information, that isn't a crowded coffee shop, becomes more important. Having the expertise to find the right information, that isn't necessarily blog posts nor research pappers, again becomes more important.
Libraries are only useless to the extent that they haven't expanded. But in line with the resource curse it ends up being more lucrative to work in information technology rather than with information technology. So while many other industries are struggling the large tech companies are making bank by being part of the problem.
Please be aware of the distinction between public libraries (as is the general semantic implication when speaking of ”libraries”) serving the whole of the public; national libraries serving the whole of the public, creating systems for the retrieval of information and preserving the cultural memory of the world together with museums and archives; school libraries serving childrens’ and youths’ education; research libraries serving students, scientists, researchers and professionals in, for example, law, medicine, health sciences, industrial research on conducting research, referencing and preserving research data; hospital libraries serving the physically and mentally ill and disabled; and special libraries serving domain-based interests of for example artists, industry professionals and cultural institutions.
Also be aware of the fact that Library and Information Science as a scientific multidisciplinary field researches topics such as information theory, machine learning, cultural heritage, sociology, linguistics, comparative literature, knowledge organization, information retrieval, computer science, pedagogy, critical theory, didactics.
I also suggest a systematic literature study on the term ”information literacy”.
They are really community centers and in my view well worth it.
Oh. Right. That'd be the library.
And the steelman is a bit weak in its limbs - you could certainly make the argument that the point of original libraries wasn't the scarcity issue, but the discoverability issue. ("Just travel to Alexandria" is almost certainly not significantly cheaper than paying a scribe to create a copy)
We could also argue that they're the precursors of modern universities, because they offered a central place for scholars to gather.
Both - building a community, and making knowledge more discoverable - are still major purposes for today's libraries. (If you thought searching the Internet for info is helpful, try a librarian)
In a different timeline, libraries might not be buildings full of books, but there'd still be a purpose for librarians.