Books, Brains and the Cosmos

Libraries – Mankind’s Expanded Brain Storage

Apr 25, 2009 Rosemary E. Bachelor

An interesting concept posits that man invented, as the brain's necessary external hard drive, both books and libraries.

What, some people ask, has been the next step in outside-the-body storage compartments? Does the computer fit into this category?

It Began Perhaps a Hundred Centuries Ago

Libraries have always been around, for us and for generations of our ancestors. They have, in fact, existed for the time span covered by most recorded history. Unlike many useful things, they are free.

Why are there libraries? Who thought them up?

Carl Sagan, in his “Cosmos”, readily admitted he couldn’t name an inventor, but he does give a reason and proposes an interesting process. “When our genes could not store all the information necessary for survival, we slowly invented brains,” he explains.

“But then the time came, perhaps 10,000 years ago, when we needed to know more than could conveniently be contained in brains,” Sagan conjectured.

Stockpiling Information

The next step was figuring out how to stockpile enormous quantities of information outside the human body. It was writing down useful information for present and future generations. That gave birth to large manuscripts that people learned to bind as books. The next issue was: What to do with the extra books not needed as nearby as fingertips and homes?

“We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains,” Sagan said, noting “the warehouse of that memory is called a library.”

A Complicated Explanation of the Brain-book-library Process

Sagan had a few words for the skeptics, especially the know-it-all kind one is apt to meet at cocktail parties. His example: “The next time someone says ‘Oh, I’m Senior Launch Control for NASA, what do you do?’ You can say ‘I interface with the worldwide communal memory bank for all known intelligent life on the planet.’”

The next question becomes “Are the computer and internet access the next step for greater amounts of information storage outside the individual brain?” In one sense they are, in that they can store gargantuan amounts of information that can be retrieved in seconds.

There are questions about the permanence of much that is “stored” both online and in millions of computers, as well as the lifetime of outdated software. It has been estimated that thousands of personal websites will cease being maintained after their owners die. Their content may not last as long as books written centuries ago and still used today.

Issues about the future track of information storage and retrieval are complex, but Carl Sagan’s conceptualization of this process remains fascinating. “We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself,” he says.

Source: Sagan, Carl, “Cosmos,” landmark television series which premiered in 1980, bringing science into the living rooms of millions of people., and the name of a book based on that series.

The copyright of the article Books, Brains and the Cosmos in Science/Tech Books is owned by Rosemary E. Bachelor. Permission to republish Books, Brains and the Cosmos in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.