African proverb: "when an old person dies, a library burns down" - psychology says the generation now in their 70s and 80s carries these 7 types of irreplaceable knowledge that will vanish within a decade if nobody asks for it - Silicon Canals

"My grandmother used to tell me stories about rationing during the war. Not the dates and battles you find in history books, but the small details - how they'd save sugar for months to make a birthday cake, how neighbors would share whatever they had, how fear felt when sirens went off at night. She passed away five years ago. With her went all those stories I never thought to record."

"There's an African proverb that captures this loss perfectly. As Alain Mabanckou, the Malian writer and ethnologist, put it: "In Africa, when an old person dies, a library burns." Think about that for a moment. Every person in their 70s and 80s today carries decades of knowledge that exists nowhere else. Not on Google. Not in any database. Just in their minds."

People in their 70s and 80s carry decades of unique, non-digitized knowledge stored only in memory. This knowledge includes practical wisdom learned through trial and error: sustaining long-term relationships without constant communication; resourcefulness in scarcity and household skills such as rationing and recipe preservation; community-building habits of mutual aid; and emotional experience of living through crises. Psychology research distinguishes seven types of such irreplaceable knowledge. The existing window to record and learn from these people may be roughly a decade before much of this experiential intelligence is lost permanently.

Read at Silicon Canals