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THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA 2.0
More than 2,000 years ago, the Library of Alexandria was the greatest centre of learning in the ancient world. Greek scholars gathered the best texts from all cultures and language groups. Mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy and literature were collected, and civilisation benefited immensely.
Then came the Roman Empire and its insatiable lust for power. Rome piggybacked on the knowledge and technology of the Greek world. It combined it with ruthless administration and dominating military power. Knowledge was useful. So was controlling it. Roman Emperors Aurelian and Diocletian finally destroyed the library.
Around the same time, Christianity turned Rome on its head. They refused to worship the Emperor as a god and believed in a higher power than the State. Emperor Diocletian issued an imperial edict mandating the empire-wide seizure and public burning of all Christian scriptures and church archives. Roman officials systematically raided homes and churches in an attempt to destroy all texts. Christians handed over fake papers or medical books to illiterate Roman guards because many could not read Greek; they took the medical books and threw them into the fire.
Welcome to Alexandria 2.0.
Anthropic, maker of the AI Claude, recently launched something called “Project Panama”. It is purchasing millions of second-hand books, chopping off their spines, feeding the pages through industrial scanners, then dumping the remains. Some books were so rare they were the only surviving copy and are now gone.
An internal company message described the mission as an effort to “destructively scan all the books in the world”. Even better, another said: “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.” Sounds like a Bond villain’s message to a henchman.
AI companies and governments are now devouring humanity’s written records at a staggering pace. Some apparently want to erase the original copies and pass the knowledge off as their own. Anthropic is even watermarking their content to show that they created it. Let’s hope they don’t alter the original scanned documents. But how will we know… Perhaps pre-AI books, printed before 2017, will become a hot commodity. How will humanity preserve a pre-AI history?
As people rely on AI content, there is a good chance that bookstores and print publishers will slowly become extinct. This will leave big tech and governments with a monopoly on information. Worse still, they will be the ones who get the authoritative say in what is fact or fiction. When original print books are gone, how will the average person stand up to such propaganda?
What could possibly go wrong?
History offers a clue. Stalin murdered intellectuals. Hitler burned books. Mao’s Chinese Cultural Revolution murdered academics by the millions and destroyed books. Pol Pot’s regime killed anyone who even looked like they were educated, going so far as to target people who simply wore glasses. Clearly, power doesn’t like to share knowledge. How will AI overlords and power-hungry politicians react once they finally consolidate and control the world’s knowledge?
AI is now embedded in everything. You go to the supermarket, and you encounter military surveillance courtesy of Palantir. You write a blog, or keep a website, and a company called Pangram ranks your site based on linguistic patterns to determine whether text is human-written, fully AI-generated, or AI-assisted. It is often horribly wrong, but it has the ability to act as an authority that discredits your work. You go to the airport… AI biometrics…. You catch my drift.
Here’s a comparison. The early internet was our Greek age. Knowledge was gathered and opened to the masses. The world benefits. Freedom and knowledge flourish. Then came our Roman Republic. Big Tech organised it, monetised it and concentrated its power. Life gets easier, but freedom is slowly reduced. Now the world seems to be on the march towards Empire and destruction. This is the stage where technology is weaponised against the people. Those in power seek to embed themselves and their cronies. At this point, you get the destruction of Alexandria 2.0.
History gives us reason to be wary. Stalin immediately targeted intellectuals. Hitler burned books. Mao slaughtered academics. Pol Pot killed those who simply wore glasses. Those hungry for power rarely enjoy people who think for themselves.
The next Library of Alexandria may not need to burn. Control the librarian. Erase inconvenient knowledge and distract the population with mountains of digital slop. Make truth impossible to find. If all that fails, you sent out the troops.
Go buy a book!
New Name, New Game — But Would You Trust Naoero?
Nauru has undergone a little rebranding, officially returning to its traditional name, Naoero. But the tiny Pacific nation isn’t stopping at a new name — it has much bigger ambitions.
Naoero wants to become a cryptocurrency powerhouse of the Pacific, establishing the Command Ridge Virtual Asset Authority to regulate digital assets and potentially provide a model other Pacific nations could follow.
Not everyone is convinced.
Commentary in Vanuatu’s media has questioned whether Naoero is really the country the Pacific should trust to lead such an ambitious financial experiment given its past.
Australia’s Internet Lifelines Under the Sea
Two vital subsea communication cables off the coast of Perth were recently damaged in quick succession, raising questions about just how vulnerable Australia’s internet connection really is.
The Indigo West and Indigo Central cables suffered faults inside a designated Submarine Cable Protection Zone, with unusual vessel activity reported nearby. The Australian Federal Police received a report and is assessing the incident.
What may surprise many locals is that our internet doesn’t predominantly beam down from satellites. Around 99 per cent of Australia’s international communications travel through just 16 subsea cables.
These fibre-optic lifelines, some only about the width of a garden hose, carry everything from Google searches and emails to banking and cloud services.
Published September 2026 Chitchat Newspaper.