Buildings, books, and much, much more …

… The World Without Libraries: A Speculation | Lindsey Drager. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

"Only in extinction is the collector comprehended," Walter Benjamin claims in his 1969 essay "Unpacking My Library." And while I do not conceive of libraries as merely collections, our celebration of the "booklessness" that characterizes an increasing number of libraries today suggests we are interested in eliminating all that clutter, all that material and matter we call books.

As Michael Crichton once pointed out, predicting the future by conceiving of it strictly in terms of an extended present is likely to lead to error, precisely because the future  will be filled with surprises.