Comment by zhivota

People knowing things represents redundancy. It has long been a fear around technology that humans would lose the knowledge and if the technology fails or is somehow taken away, be helpless.

This is what underpins the fear, I think.

You don't know how to farm but mentally you rest easy knowing a lot of other people do know. You also know there are books you could read to learn, if you needed to. Most things are like this, you could bootstrap your way to casting metals and probably even electric lights with only books and raw materials. Computer chips don't have this property.

Personally this is why I'd like to see libraries survive, even though I actually mostly read on my e-reader. I guess I took Anathem to heart.