Imagine if libraries had been invented just recently: all of human knowledge, way more than any one person could consume in a lifetime, in a single building. There’s no index yet, and you need special knowledge to access the building, but inside, every book, journal, article you could ever hope to imagine.

Overwhelming, but exciting. There’s no way you’ll be able to read everything, so you just dive in, reading whatever you like, following authors and their references to find new books, or picking random ones from the shelves. Exhilarating!

Then, someone invents the index. Now, if you know the right incantations, you can be much more specific in your search for knowledge, your creation of wisdom. Or not! You can still just grab a book from a random stack and dive in.

The point is that you now have options. New ways to interact: browsing, or searching.

Then someone else invents the standard library card. Suddenly, the majority of people in most countries in the world have complete, unfettered access to the library. They browse, find authors they like, find recommendations by those authors, or by friends.

You see where this is going. Some smart person realises that there’s money to be made, and starts selling advertising space in the indexes. It can be targeted too, since they know what you’re looking for, so can make advertising cards that sit alongside the categories.

Soon it’s hard to figure out what books are being “recommended” by the index vs those that are genuinely what you’re looking for.

Someone else realises that they can use the overwhelming feeling that the library generates as a way to make money. They set up a shop next door to the library that gives you the first chapter of any book to see if you like it. You read it and go back for more, and hey, there’s the second chapter. You go back again, but this time it’s the first chapter of a second book. Then the first chapter of a third book. They’re all good, so you go back and wow, there’s the third chapter of that first book! The next chapter is the first of a fourth book but you don’t like it.

But you go back the next day to see if you get the fourth chapter of that first book. Or maybe the second chapter of those other books you like. This time it’s an advert. But after the advert you get the second chapter of the second book and feel like you’ve won a prize.

You go back the next day. And the day after that. You don’t mind the adverts so much because sometimes they have pictures of cats. And you really like it when you get a new chapter of that book.

Meanwhile, fewer and fewer people are going to the library. The index maintainer decides to get in on the “curation” act and now offers a new service. You just ask a person at the front desk of the library what you want to know, and they tell you. You don’t even need to read the books any more, as this person read them all (mostly, kinda skimmed them to be honest), but you get the answer straight away. And boy does it sound compelling and authoritative. So much so that you feel authoritative too.

Nobody reads any more. They just pull levers on the slot machine, or ask questions and accept the answers and pat themselves on the back for being so well informed about the world.

The library is still there. Nobody has locked the doors or barred the entrances (though the world’s richest man seems to be paying angry people to stand outside with placards for… some reason?), but reading is hard and takes effort and who has the time to do that? Especially with so many cute cat pictures to look at, and you kinda get the information anyway.

The library is still there, but somehow, somewhere along the way, it stopped being for you.

Thank goodness we’re all too smart to have let that happen. The libraries are still there, all human knowledge at our fingertips. And we’re still reading.

Right?