Ahh... the hubris of modernity's overconsumption. Books, oil, people, food, structures, travelling without moving... We produced and consumed to the point where the world was no longer enough.
'Tis a shame it cost us our civilisation.
'Tis a shame it cost us our civilisation.
8 billion people with 30,000 books each... I'm trying to math it...
Assuming that each book is a fairly narrow .75 inches and your shelves have 8 layers vertically, you're going to need 234 linear feet of shelves. Assuming your shelves are 3 feet apart with six inches on each side for the shelves, you need 468 square feet of floor space dedicated exclusively to book shelves.
That's roughly equivalent to each person in the US using their entire living space for books. I'm pretty sure worldwide, most people would need more than their entire living space.
It's dreadful browsing a book store and wondering how many of those books are a waste of paper, worse still a waste of time.
There's more to be said about the "aesthetic" of books, both from the author's and reader's sides. And today it seems that a book's content isn't the only thing that matters; Or for some authors (particularly in tech) book sales aren't the main goal, neither something more altruistic. For them a book is validating their "authority" in the field, a strategic move.
I'm sure someone would make the case for subjective and objective values of a book, and they'd be right in an universal sort of way. What I yearn for is a way of knowing which books are valuable to me in a practically endless supply. Therein lies the rub because a book is a bigger time sink than a song, movie, or video.