“That nobody had opened those filing cabinets for 50 years was because they were idiots and didn’t understand the archive’s value."
But who is it valuable to? Ultimately a great deal of this is purely interesting to the increasing small number of people who are personally or professionally invested in Orwell. The value here is that the archive could generate a couple of conference keynotes for professors, a new foreword in a reprint, or, at a stretch, a new biography.
There is a very small chance that enough new material, or changes to material, could merit a brand new publication, but ultimately the existing published works stand by themselves and the rest amounts to high brow gossip.
History. It should be a part of our historical and cultural record, not the private playthings for the wealthy.
Whenever something like this comes up, I'm appalled at how little people seem to give a shit about preserving things for the future. In the end, it's all we have to pass down through the ages.
When I die, family and close friends will have access to all my data. They can choose what to do with it. Once I'm dead, I'll have no interest in my privacy.
This is also a nonsensical argument and I don't appreciate these bad faith "gotcha" arguments. While my data might be of some historical interest in the sense of understanding the average male in Western Europe in the early 21st century, it isn't nearly of the same significance as that of Orwell. Nobody is going to buy my data and lock it away in a vault. In addition, much of my presence, my "data" is available publicly online in my posts and comments on HN, Reddit and other social media. Orwell didn't post on Reddit, afaik, so somebody buying up Orwell's archive is a much more significant and impactful loss in multiple ways.
But you just wanted to "win" an argument, so I don't know why I'm wasting my time. Have you given any of this any thought at all? Like, really? This really isn't the place for trolling or just making noise. Reddit's more suited for that.
But who is it valuable to? Ultimately a great deal of this is purely interesting to the increasing small number of people who are personally or professionally invested in Orwell. The value here is that the archive could generate a couple of conference keynotes for professors, a new foreword in a reprint, or, at a stretch, a new biography.
There is a very small chance that enough new material, or changes to material, could merit a brand new publication, but ultimately the existing published works stand by themselves and the rest amounts to high brow gossip.