It will become increasingly important to address the long term sustainability of both physical and digital information and ensure that this knowledge is diffused across society. Traditionally libraries have served as the archivists of information and knowledge – potentially this approach should be applied to the digital world. Without a comprehensive approach to digital preservation, physical books may be lost forever while inane Facebook comments will be preserved for eternity. We currently create more new digital information each day than was created in during all of human history. If physical books are not available online they might as well not exist. Historically speaking less than 1% of human knowledge was captured in physical books, which makes those that remain even more valuable given that vast amount of information and knowledge that we have already failed to capture/acquire.
A balance needs to be struck between implementing top down centralised information management structures/regulation and harnessing the capacity of this Internet for horizontal communication and engagement whilst drawing upon the innovative potential of crowd generated information and knowledge.