the corner office

sigh:

The vast majority of the world's books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It's just numbers. ... you simply have no chance of seeing even most of what exists. Statistically speaking, you will die having missed almost everything.

The article is well worth a read. It may seem like a daft thing to get worried about, but for collectors/hoarders/archivists (like me), this can be a hard thing to make peace with.

Tangentially, but maybe not, because you could say the same about human history, this also reminds me of a quote I once read by free software prophet Richard Stallman (excellent book, by the way):

"I was always in favor of immortality," he says. "I was shocked that most people regarded immortality as a bad thing. How else would we be able to see what the world is like 200 years from now?"

Amen.