(October 1, 2018 at 6:54 am)DLJ Wrote: Yet, from the perspective of Meliorism, no. The important component (the knowledge and wisdom) has gone. The town council wanted to build a by-pass and some things had to go. But there is a reason why even uninhabited medieval castles or Edwardian palaces don't get demolished. That forum was an historical record, a reference library; recorded and time-stamped. It had an identity of its own.
This act was more than vandalism, not just carving a love-heart into a tree, it was the destruction of the tree itself. It was the digital version of genocide... memeocide.
Like Alexander destroying the Avesta, like the demise of the Library of Alexandria, like ISIS bulldozing Nineveh, like the fire at the National Museum of Brazil... future historians will have nothing but a footnote and some salvaged wreckage to work with.
I must admit the task does feel like having to rebuild civilisation because some lunatic asked why we can't use nukes.
I most certainly am sad to see all the work, hundreds of hours from hundreds of different people just wiped out in an instance.
Discussion forums are interesting. They're like a mixture of a pub/bar and a library, but one where you can still see ghostly shadows of previous customers playing Pool in the corner.
