This slipping-away of knowledge is always happening. It happens in our minds, as memories fade. But arguably, we don’t need to retain all knowledge. To know too much can be a burden. As such, the process of collectively managing knowledge begs us all to be fortune tellers: What information will we need in the future?
Of course, the future is always just out of reach. The best we can do is attempt to share the collective knowledge of today in ways that feel honest, generous, and timeless. We need to retain something of the personal, of the human—of the original private triumph of failure.