07/29/2026
How long has this been going on for 🤔 Book lovers have long mourned the destruction of old books. Librarians often will have sensible explanations and put into perspective the reality of things considering the sheer volume of books that are out there. But there are still certainly some books out there that are worthy of saving, if for nothing other than as a historical record of what people thought and wrote in that place and time. Especially on niche topics that did not have much institutional support.
In our new world where AI systems hallucinate and spit out modified versions of existing works that real humans created, whether that be a book or a YouTube video, it might be a good idea to hold onto our old copies of physical media. We take for granted that we can "simply" grab another copy later on in the future. It might not even be the same thing, especially when companies are constantly being consolidated and controlled by private equity. Maybe the publisher that you trust now in 2026 will conduct itself differently in 2029 or 2035. Maybe right now there are still plenty of copies of plenty of out of print books and we don't have to worry, but that may not always be the case going into the future. People have especially complained about new releases of old movies and shows on DVD being of poor quality and lacking scenes they remember.
I know most of us don't like to watch online advertisements that are forced onto us when we want to watch a video, but a few years ago I remember tech side hustle bros promoting this business idea that you can sell published-on-demand books that have been ghost written by a computer to make money 🤖 🤑 💰 Maybe some of you have accidentally ordered a book from a major online retailer that was not at all what you expected, but it had a similar title and a cover design reminiscent of what you intended to purchase, and was oddly very.... Plain. Was that intentional on the part of the "author"? If you've tried to find a translated version of a book for someone that doesn't speak English and it doesn't necessarily look official, it would be a good idea to double check that it is accurate as well. Now that more of us have heard about AI children's books showing up in our libraries and real stores where we also buy our groceries, it all really makes you wonder where things are heading 📖
