The new episode reminded me of these fears about the fragility of accumulated knowledge, and the efforts to preserve it. The past is filled with examples of human knowledge being erased through various methods and timescales. The legend of the Library of Alexandria is that it burned to the ground in a catastrophic fire, but the truth is sadder: It had been fading away for centuries before the fire, due to an increasingly anti-intellectual environment. During Spain’s colonization of the Americas, settlers profligately destroyed the written records of the Maya civilization, leaving future generations only a tantalizing glimpse of their culture. We’ve come by this fear the hard way, because history shows it is tragically common to lose priceless information. While we are bombarded by a proliferation of information, some can’t help but nervously anticipate its loss. Most of us know what it’s like for an important file to be corrupted or lost in the wilds of an old hard drive, so it’s not much of a leap to at least imagine it happening on a civilization-wide level. These preservation projects expose simmering apprehensions over a coming breakdown in our access to knowledge.

Civilization game of thrones