] "What's important --- increasingly important --- is the
] process by which you figure out what to look at. This is
] the beginning of the real and true economics of
] information. Not who owns the books, who prints the
] books, who has the holdings. The crux here is access, not
] holdings. And not even access itself, but the signposts
] that tell you what to access --- what to pay attention
] to. "

It's about information, and libraries and archiving.
Concerning archiving Mr. Sterling says:
"We're already leaving some impressive gifts for the remote future of this planet. Nuclear wastes, for instance. We're going to be neatly archiving this repulsive trash in concrete and salt mines and fused glass canisters, for tens of thousands of years. Imagine the pleasure of discovering one of these nice radioactive time-bombs six thousand years from now. Imagine the joy of selfless, dedicated archaeologists burrowing into one of these twentieth-century pharaoh's tombs and dropping dead, slowly and painfully. Gosh, thanks, ancestors. Thanks, twentieth century! Thanks for thinking of us! "

The Twentieth Century: Our Curses Work