Surfing the web shortens attention spans, mangles linguistic structure, skews attention toward the very recent past, and privileges action over reflection. The wired young lack grounding in any cultural legacy. It's a 17th-century portrait. But I can't see things if they don't move. Motion minus memory.
Disordered glut incites iconoclasm.
Nicholson Baker's tales of librarians who delight in dumping their card catalogs are not all fictions. Agencies commend and promote archivists by how radically they sift and how ruthlessly they discard. Like Corraghessen Boyle's couple addicted to acquisition, we hire exterminators who leave us utterly denuded. Heritage inchoate Heritage accumulates almost by definition. Collecting is for many the raison d'etre of stewardship.