Information Overload and Cultural Perpetuation

Say you were a fast reader, and could read a book a day.

That's 7 books a week, 365 books a year, 3,650 books a decade, and in a long life, 36,650 books. (You can take a holiday on leap days.)

There are presently millions of books published every year. (The level used to be lower, about 300k/yr, pretty consistently, in English, from about the 1950s through 2000 CE.)

What is cultural literacy in terms of reading? How many books do we consider everyone (by and large) must read?

How many distinct communities-of-literary-perpetuation can exist? I'm including not just entertainment, but things we need to know to remain alive as a species. What's the minimum requisite scale for a piece of essential technological, economic, political, social, etc., knowledge?

Because I think we're pushing up on those limits. And if now today, then soon, and for the rest of your life. </casablanca>

Last year I read the somewhat-maligned Future Shock (Alvin Tofler) for the first time. It's now 51 years old. And I think it's held up remarkably well, all told. (There are obvious failures, but as a whole, it coheres and still teaches.)

One answer, and this was the role of the Encyclopaedists (Diderot, et al, 18th c.) is that we've got to "squoze down" accumulated knowledge, and filter out the bad bits. That was the original role of encyclopedias. (A tremendously political act, as it happens.)

Adapted from a pretty fascinating Mastodon thread: https://octodon.social/@kensanata/106278043872723007

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Information Overload and Cultural Perpetuation