I love books so much, but when was the last time I stepped inside of a library? I can’t even remember. From a piece by Paul Sawers at the Next Web in which Internet pioneer Vint Cerf thinks about the future of libraries:

“As with the newspaper industry, Google has had an immeasurable impact on how people access information. Indeed, most petty arguments are settled in seconds now thanks to smartphones and search engines.

When asked what he saw as the ‘future’ of libraries, he expressed deep concern about the way information will be stored and passed through generations. Books, if looked after, can be passed down through many generations – but the rate at which technology is evolving leads to some concerns about so-called bit-rot.

‘You have no idea how eager I am to ensure that the notion of library does not disappear – it’s too important. But the thing is, it’s going to have to curate an extremely broad range of materials, and increasingly digital content,’ says Cerf.

‘I am really worried right now, about the possibility of saving ‘bits’ but losing their meaning and ending up with bit-rot,’ he continues. ‘This means, you have  a bag of bits that you saved for a thousand years, but you don’t know what they mean, because the software that was needed to interpret them is no longer available, or it’s no longer executable, or you just don’t have a platform that will run it. This is a serious, serious problem and we have to solve that.'”