We live in a strange moment for literature. On one hand, we have unprecedented access to texts—Project Gutenberg digitizes forgotten travel narratives from the 1800s, scholars reconstruct thousand-year-old philosophical songs, and open-access initiatives make knowledge freely available. On the other hand, we're losing our cultural memory faster than we can preserve it.
The Internet Archive's new book "Vanishing Culture" reveals a troubling truth: our digital literary record is eroding in real time. News articles disappear, websites vanish, and even published works become inaccessible when platforms shut down or change hands. This isn't just about losing cat videos—we're losing critical discourse, literary criticism, and the very conversations that shape how we understand books.
Meanwhile, Creative Commons is grappling with how AI training affects open-access literature. Their recent research into "where power is consolidating" in the digital space reveals that even our efforts to preserve and share culture face new technological threats. The same tools that could democratize literature might also exploit it.