Brewster Kahle's talk at the Distinguished Speaker Series of SD Forum on December 16, 2004.

Advances in computing and communications mean that we can cost-effectively store every book, sound recording, movie, software package, and public web page ever created, and provide access to these collections via the Internet to students and adults all over the world. By mostly using existing institutions and funding sources, we can build this as well as compensate authors within what is the current worldwide library budget. The talk offers an update on the current (as of December 2004) state of progress towards that ideal, which would allow us to bequeath an accessible record of our cultural heritage to our descendants.