This may seem pedantry, but the last sentence in the fourth paragraph is problematic for this nitpicker-in-chief: "And Schneier deals extensively with social and moral pressures that effect trust." Does he really mean "affect," in the sense of "influence" or "alter", or does he really mean "effect," in the sense of "create" or "cause to happen"? I'm guessing the former, but I'll just have to buy the book.

Altho I agree that the inertia of keeping records trumps the work of evaluating them, the large financial services company I work for is turning with the tide, starting to focus on deletion and destruction, mainly for potential liability reasons. Not just aged documents, but prior versions, drafts, notes, etc. It makes me wonder what the historians of the future will have left for primary sources--besides the final, signed-off Establishment-sanctioned records of events. Are we on the road to compromising their ability to determine and describe What Really Happened, and thus our own ability to understand our past? Could John M. Blair write "The Control of Oil", or Ron Chernow "Titan: the Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr." fifty years hence?