> The syntax itself (ie. text) is not that important

So, you're preferentially discarding information you consider extraneous to your application, distilling it to a smaller representation that retains what you consider important about it.

Most image compression smooths skies. Because most people don’t want a regurgitated sky. If you’re an astronomer, on the other hand, you’ll compress away the trees. These are all lossy retrieval (and, inherent to compression, transformation) functions.

Blinkist would like a word.

> Good books aren't lossy

As someone who recently began rereading books, I heartily agree. The lossless original has value. That doesn’t mean the lossy imprint of that book in my mind “has little utility” or value.