question: Why did the burning of “The Library of Alexandria” set us back technologically?
comment: It didn't set anyone back technologically. There were no secret weapons or forbidden knowledge hidden there. The value of the library was that it was a central hub of learning. There was so many rare and unique books there that it attracted a lot of really smart people. It may have been the largest library at one point, but it certainly wasn't the only one, and by the time it was destroyed, it had been in decline for quite some time. It's possible that there may have been some literature there that was unique. We'll never know. But in all likelihood copies of most of its collection probably survived (at least for a while) in the other libraries of the Mediterranean.
passages: Information technology is another catalyst for careful fire protection. With so many computers in libraries there "is a decrease in floor space and an increase in more compact and powerful computer systems" which generates more heat and requires the use of many more outlets, increasing the number of potential ignition sources. From as early as the 1950s the potential dangers of computer equipment, and the facilities that house them, was recognized. Thus in 1962 the National Fire Protection Association began developing the first safety standards specifically applicable to electronic computer systems. This standard is called NFPA 75 Protection of Information Technology Equipment. FM Global Data Sheet 5–32 is another standard providing guidelines to protect against not only fire, but water, power loss, etc.
   Many French scholars accompanied Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1799, where they made many important finds. When forced to surrender to the British in 1801, the scholars initially strongly resisted the claim made by the British to have the collections of the expedition handed over. Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire ominously threatened that, were that British demand persisted in, history would record "a second burning of a library in Alexandria". The threat was, however, not carried out, and the finds were finally handed over and ended up in the British Museum.
  
  Section::::Industrial Revolution period.
   On August 24, 1814, during the Burning of Washington, British and Canadian troops set fire to the Capitol building, thereby destroying some 3,000 volumes in the initial collection of the Library of Congress which was established fourteen years earlier. Most of these books had been ordered from London before the outbreak of the War of 1812. Immediately following the British withdrawal, former President Thomas Jefferson sold to the US Government his entire private library, 6700 volumes, to replace the loss – from which the Library of Congress went on to expand to its enormous present size though a fire in 1851 destroyed around two-thirds of Jefferson's collection. The material destroyed in 1814 is the modern digital storage equivalent of 3.42 gigabytes and could easily be hosted on one single present-day smartphone, tablet, or SD card.
   For example, the automobile was high technology with respect to the horse carriage; however, it evolved into technology and finally into appropriate technology with a stable, unchanging TSN. The main high-technology advance in the offing is some form of electric car—whether the energy source is the sun, hydrogen, water, air pressure, or traditional charging outlet. Electric cars preceded the gasoline automobile by many decades and are now returning to replace the traditional gasoline automobile. The printing press was a development that changed the way that information was stored, transmitted, and replicated. This allowed empowered authors but it also promoted censorship and information overload in writing technology.
   Humans experience an overload in information by excessively copying ancient manuscripts and replicating artifacts, creating libraries and museums that have remained in the present. Around 1453 AD, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and this marked another period of information proliferation. As a result of lowering production costs, generation of printed materials ranging from pamphlets, manuscripts to books were made available to the average person.
   Greek and Hellenistic engineers were responsible for many inventions and improvements to existing technology. The Hellenistic period, in particular, saw a sharp increase in technological advancement, fostered by a climate of openness to new ideas, the blossoming of a mechanistic philosophy, and the establishment of the Library of Alexandria and its close association with the adjacent museion. In contrast to the typically anonymous inventors of earlier ages, ingenious minds such as Archimedes, Philo of Byzantium, Heron, Ctesibius, and Archytas remain known by name to posterity.
   Islamic science began its decline in the 12th or 13th century, before the Renaissance in Europe, and due in part to the 11th–13th century Mongol conquests, during which libraries, observatories, hospitals and universities were destroyed. The end of the Islamic Golden Age is marked by the destruction of the intellectual center of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid caliphate in 1258.
  
  Section::::Post-classical science.:Western Europe.
   But this golden age was not just some prosaic period of great expansion to the number and accessibility of the libraries of Europe; it was also a period of great conflict. The Reformation did not just inspire a redistribution of power but also a redistribution of wealth and knowledge. While the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) decimated the population of Europe (from 21 million at the beginning of the conflict to 13 million by the end) it also aided in the redistribution of this wealth and knowledge.
   In 48 BC, during Caesar's Civil War, Julius Caesar was besieged at Alexandria. His soldiers set fire to his own ships while trying to clear the wharves to block the fleet belonging to Cleopatra's brother Ptolemy XIV. This fire spread to the parts of the city nearest to the docks, causing considerable devastation. The first-century AD Roman playwright and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger quotes Livy's "Ab Urbe Condita Libri", which was written between 63 and 14 BC, as saying that the fire started by Caesar destroyed 40,000 scrolls from the Library of Alexandria. The Greek Middle Platonist Plutarch ( 46–120 AD) writes in his "Life of Caesar" that, "[W]hen the enemy endeavored to cut off his communication by sea, he was forced to divert that danger by setting fire to his own ships, which, after burning the docks, thence spread on and destroyed the great library." The Roman historian Cassius Dio ( 155 – 235 AD), however, writes: "Many places were set on fire, with the result that, along with other buildings, the dockyards and storehouses of grain and books, said to be great in number and of the finest, were burned." However, Florus and Lucan only mention that the flames burned the fleet itself and some "houses near the sea".
   BULLET::::- BBC Domesday Project, a partnership between Acorn Computers Ltd, Philips, Logica and the BBC with some funding from the European Commission's ESPRIT programme, to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th-century census of England. It is frequently cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage.
   There were also information enthusiasts. The Library of Alexandria was established around the 3rd century BCE or 1st century Rome, which introduced acts of preserving historical artifacts. Museums and libraries established universal grounds of preserving the past for the future, but much like books, libraries were only granted with limited access. 
  
  Section::::History.:Renaissance.
   In some cases, the destroyed works are irreplaceable and their burning constitutes a severe loss to cultural heritage. Examples include the burning of books and burying of scholars under China's Qin Dynasty (213–210 BCE), the burning of the Library of Alexandria (c. 49), the obliteration of the Library of Baghdad (1258), the destruction of Aztec codices by Itzcoatl (1430s), the burning of Maya codices on the order of bishop Diego de Landa (1562), and Burning of Jaffna Public Library in Sri Lanka (1981).
   In 1348, the Black Death and other disasters sealed a sudden end to philosophic and scientific development. Yet, the rediscovery of ancient texts was stimulated by the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, when many Byzantine scholars sought refuge in the West. Meanwhile, the introduction of printing was to have great effect on European society. The facilitated dissemination of the printed word democratized learning and allowed ideas such as algebra to propagate more rapidly. These developments paved the way for the Scientific Revolution, where scientific inquiry, halted at the start of the Black Death, resumed.
  
  Section::::Impact of science in Europe.
   Section::::Middle Ages.:Repeated destruction of Alexandria libraries.
  
  The library of the Serapeum in Alexandria was trashed, burned and looted, 392, at the decree of Theophilus of Alexandria, who was ordered so by Theodosius I. Around the same time, Hypatia was murdered. One of the largest destructions of books occurred at the Library of Alexandria, traditionally held to be in 640; however, the precise years are unknown as are whether the fires were intentional or accidental.
  
  Section::::Middle Ages.:Iconoclast writings (by Byzantine authorities).
   Primatologist, Richard Wrangham, theorizes that the control of fire by early humans and the associated development of cooking was the spark that radically changed human evolution. Texts such as "Guns, Germs, and Steel" suggest that early advances in plant agriculture and husbandry fundamentally shifted the way that collective groups of individuals, and eventually societies, developed.
  
  Section::::Modern examples and effects.
   BULLET::::- The Library at Pergamon, founded by Attalus I; it contained 200,000 volumes which were moved to the Serapeion by Mark Antony and Cleopatra, after the destruction of the Museion. The Serapeion was partially destroyed in 391, and the last books disappeared in 641 CE following the Arab conquest.
  
  BULLET::::- The Library at Athens, the "Ptolemaion", which gained importance following the destruction of the Library at Alexandria ; the Library of Pantainos, around 100 CE; the library of Hadrian, in 132 CE.
  
  BULLET::::- The Library at Rhodes, a library that rivaled the Library of Alexandria.
   The fall of Persepolis paradoxically contributed to the preservation of the Achaemenid administrative archives that might have been lost due to passage of time and natural and man-made causes. According to archaeological evidence, the partial burning of Persepolis did not affect the Persepolis Fortification Archive tablets, but may have caused the eventual collapse of the upper part of the northern Fortification wall that preserved the tablets until their recovery by the Oriental Institute's archaeologists.
  
  Section::::Antiquity.:Chinese philosophy books (by Emperor Qin Shi Huang and anti-Qin rebels).
   Scholars and social critics often cite the invention of the printing press as a major invention that changed the course of history. The force of the printing press rested not in its impact on the printing industry or inventors, but on its ability to transmit information to a broader public by way of mass production. This event is so widely recognized because of its social impact – as a democratizing force.
  
  The printing press is often seen as the historical counterpart to the Internet.
   Section::::Historical background.:Christian book burnings.:Burning of the Library of Alexandria.
  
  The stories surrounding the loss of the great Library of Alexandria include:
  
  BULLET::::- Emperor Aurelian's (270–275 CE) sack of Alexandria in 272 CE, which badly damaged the section of the city which housed part of the library.
  
  BULLET::::- Supposedly (but incorrectly) the religious riots aimed against pagan temples and their rituals in 391 CE, sanctioned by decree of Emperor Theodosius I and led by Coptic Pope Theophilus.
   In 612 BC the Assyrian capital Nineveh was destroyed by a coalition of Babylonians, Scythians and Medes. During the burning of the Royal Palace, a great fire ravaged the Library of Ashurbanipal where the scholar King Ashurbanipal had amassed a great number of texts and tablets from various countries. Modern historians believe the library may have contained a considerable number of texts written on such mediums as leather scrolls, wax boards, and possibly papyri – all of them vulnerable to fire. However, the considerable number of clay cuneiform tablets became partially baked. This destructive event helped preserve the tablets, which lay in the earth and were eventually found by 19th century archaeologists.
   When Technology Fails
  
  When Technology Fails, edited by Neil Schlager, is a collection of 103 case studies about significant technological disasters, accidents, and failures of the 20th century. It was published in 1994 by Gale Research, Inc. It was one of the top referenced books in the New York Public Library in 1995. The book was updated and re-released in 2005.
   List of book-burning incidents
  
  Notable book burnings have taken place throughout history.
  
  Section::::Antiquity.
  
  Section::::Antiquity.:Destruction of Ebla.
  
  Destruction of Ebla 2240 BC, then in 1600 BC.
  
  Section::::Antiquity.:Destruction of Mari.
  
  Destruction of Mari in 1765 BC.
  
  Section::::Antiquity.:Destruction of Alalakh.
  
  Destruction of Alalakh circa 1200 BC.
  
  Section::::Antiquity.:Destruction of Ugarit.
  
  Destruction of Ugarit 1180 BC.
  
  Section::::Antiquity.:Library of Ashurbanipal (by Babylonians, Scythian's and Medes).
   New knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors are made possible by technologies which assist humans in traveling to places they could not previously reach, and by scientific instruments by which we study nature in more detail than our natural senses allow.
  
  Since much of technology is applied science, technical history is connected to the history of science. Since technology uses resources, technical history is tightly connected to economic history. From those resources, technology produces other resources, including "technological artifacts" used in everyday life.
   In the case of the Western World and in Islamic realms much emphasis was placed on preserving the rationalist Greek Tradition of figures such as Aristotle. In the context of science within Islam there are questions as to whether Islamic Scientists simply preserved accomplishments from Antiquity or built upon earlier Greek advances. Regardless, Classical European Science was brought back to the Christian Kingdoms due to the experience of the Crusades.
  
  As a result of Persian trade in China, and the battle of the Talas River, Chinese innovations entered the Islamic Intellectual World. These include advances in astronomy and in paper-making.
   The extent of the damage to Chinese intellectual heritage is difficult to assess, for details have not been recorded in history. Several facts, however, indicate that the consequences of this event, although enduring, were not extensive. First, it is recorded in Li Si's memorial that all technological books were to be spared. Secondly, even the "objectionable" books, poetry and philosophy in particular, were preserved in imperial archives and allowed to be kept by the official scholars.
  
presuppositions: The burning of the Library of Alexandria set back technology.  The burning of the library of Alexandria set us back technologically.
corrections: Most of the information at the Library of Alexandria was available elsewhere, although some unique literature may have been destroyed. The burning of the library of Alexandria did not set anyone back technologically as it was not the only library that existed.
raw_presuppositions: The burning of the Library of Alexandria set back technology.  The burning of the library of Alexandria set us back technologically.
raw_corrections: Most of the information at the Library of Alexandria was available elsewhere, although some unique literature may have been destroyed. The burning of the library of Alexandria did not set anyone back technologically as it was not the only library that existed.