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He also has a radical view of the importance of storing information digitally for the future. Could it have the potential to take over from what has been quaintly termed 'dead tree media', in other words, the book? "Every piece of information that human culture has accumulated over thousands of years is stored in books which are stored in libraries. All the new information we generate finds itself on the web, where it is instantly accessible and searchable from everywhere. Before long, the web will become the first port of call when doing research. How long before it becomes the only port of call? Gradually information which is stored in books in libraries may fade from our collective view and become lost, so that it seems to far future historians that the end of the twentieth century was the dawn of human knowledge. This may seem an appalling and incomprehensible thought to us, but think how catastrophic the destruction of the Library of Alexandria was in the seventh century. Nowadays we don't even know what it was we lost."
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Adams is keen to point out the limitless nature of storage on the internet, a huge advantage despite the present problems of slow download time during peak hours. Some have suggested that the internet is on the verge of collapse due to information overload, but he dismisses the argument. "The way the internet works was designed to allow the system to withstand nuclear attack, but this just happens to be a perfect model for organic growth. Anybody can add to it, nobody owns it and nobody controls it. It just spreads and spreads. And this is an important point to remember when people complain that there is too much American content or too much corporate presence. It is not 'zero-sum'; adding something to it doesn't mean taking something away. TV is a 'zero-sum' world. If you want to put out a particular type of programme, such as a Hollywood movie at ten o'clock, then what was previously there, such as a major news programme, will have to go away. The internet, on the other hand, is infinitely stretchable."
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