Throwing Away Knowledge

I decided to remove all the magazines that I had collected over the last 2.5years at Crows Nest and was going to archive them in a box upstairs. During this time, I came across a website that provided some advice on living a simpler life. It talked of reducing clutter in your house, and making sure things are in the right place.

So I decided to just throw the magazines away. However, as my flatmate succinctly put it, "I can throw away clothes and material things, but I have issues throwing away knowledge". It's the promise that there is some nugget of information that can be found be reading the articles again that will always haunt me.
I had a conflict. I knew that if I archived them, I was 95% sure that I would never read them again.
Luckily my Mandarin teacher wanted to read up on some investing magazines. So now they have a new happy home. I just have to work out what to do with The Economist, Time, Men's Health....

Why do we hold on to things that really have no value to us? Knowledge should reside in the brain, and if it's not there, then there's many other places to store it, is there?

Damn! two cheap calls already:

i'm sorry, but are you calling Men's Health knowledge? wow, that explains a lot :P instead of throwing out, give to charity. that's what i did when i moved, gave majority of my books to st vinnies.
reenie (email) - 29 November '05 - 03:51

Sounds like it's time to join eBay!

I understand the inclination to not throw out knowledge. Knowledge is valuable, but it is everywhere.

I doubt your old Time and Economist mags are going to give you any valid up to date information (knowledge). And you know that the 95% chance of you not reading them again is really 100%.

Perhaps if you had not read the mags yet it would be different. However, you did read them, took what you learned from them and moved on. Nothing wrong with that.

I hope your recycling bin is not full :)
taipan (link) - 01 December '05 - 05:02