Internet Archive will save paper books

Since 1996, the non-profit organization Internet Archive has been chronicling the Internet, keeping copies of web pages, graphic materials, video, audio recordings, software and digital books. Without a doubt, this is one of the most important projects of the Network, which aims to preserve the cultural and historical values ​​of civilization in the era of short-lived digital media.

Previously, only digital information was in the interest of the Internet Archive. But now they have decided to allocate a warehouse in California for the long-term storage of physical copies of books. They will be stored in boxes of 40 books in piles of 24 boxes (pictured) in cargo containers .

The reasons for this decision are not obvious, but if you think about it, it becomes a bit scary for humanity.

The fact is that now many libraries and commercial firms have launched a global global campaign to digitize books. What do libraries do with paper copies after digitizing? Usually they are taken to a remote storage facility ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ), and some even intend to destroy as useless (thank God, this has not yet reached, but what will happen in the future?). One way or another, but in the modern library all access to the content of the books is in digital form.
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Everything leads to the fact that in a few decades all copies of books available to people will exist only in digital form and no one can guarantee that they correspond to the originals. New books will be published in numbers, and paper copies will become more and more expensive as paper runs fall - and over time will become an extremely elite product for selected collectors.

You can say that such logic presupposes the development of mankind in the genre of the 1984 dystopia. In fact, it is theoretically possible to create global information systems that will adjust digital content in real time throughout the Internet. But this is not the point, but of trusting people in digital information. A new generation of people who will grow up surrounded by digital media and who have never seen paper books can cast doubt on the authenticity of these electronic documents - and without such trust, not only the horrors of dystopias, but cyberpunk nightmares will come true. That is why the storage of paper artifacts is very important for humanity.

Usually museums are involved in the storage of artifacts confirming the authenticity of the story. But it is unlikely that they will undertake the mission of storing physical copies of books after libraries cease to do this, which will become electronic. Storing artifacts is not a library task.

So the Internet Archive took over this mission just in case. Who knows, suddenly in the future they will remain the only reliable database of human knowledge, like the Library of Alexandria two thousand years ago.

Who guarantees the safety of the Internet Archive digital base? No one. Moreover, looking at their data center with servers, they take big doubts that it will be able to stand unchanged for at least a hundred years, not to mention millennia. The same with cargo containers. Apparently, in order to preserve the human heritage, someone must come up with some kind of decentralized and reliable cryptosystem, which even theoretically cannot be destroyed. What are some ideas?