My mother would tell of her excitement as I received my first library card from the local library in our Battersea estate, and how she had yearned to have had the opportunity to access all that knowledge in her youth. Now in the 21st century with access to thousands of libraries of information, collective knowledge in the West’s public sphere seems to be disoriented as an inordinate number of forces vie for our interests.

Historians and archeologists will tell you that determining the truth of what has been done has always been a difficult task, requiring much rigour and analysis. However the emergence of artificial intelligence and the scale at which human-like content can be created will make society much less trusting of itself and of its own reality, thus making its people more open to manipulation at the hands of its creators. The analogue feeling that the library embodies and the mental discipline acquired through a steady increase in focus time is sincerely missed, and in my view, part of the malaise that affects us in this age of speed and excess. The torrent of noise, deception and fragmentation may yet find it's new champion in AI.