Building and Preserving the Library of Everything

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Sep 10, 2025

Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, discusses the importance of universal access to knowledge. He shares insights into how AI is transforming library accessibility and the role of nonprofits in defending online rights. Kahle details the origins of the Internet Archive and its mission to preserve cultural heritage, emphasizing the critical need for digital access in democracies. He also highlights innovative projects, collaboration with Wikipedia, and the profound impact of the internet on free knowledge.

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INSIGHT

AI As A New Library Interface

AI becomes the conversational interface to decades of obscure, practical knowledge the web buries.
Brewster Kahle says public, respectful AI will surface archived literature for anyone who talks to machines.

ANECDOTE

A Single Lifelong Idea

Brewster traced his lifelong aim to two ideas from 1980: protect privacy and build the digital library of Alexandria.
He described founding companies like Thinking Machines and early publishing systems as steps toward the Internet Archive.

ANECDOTE

Fighting A National Security Letter

The Internet Archive fought a national security letter with EFF and ACLU support and won release of the gag order.
Brewster credits EFF's readiness and donor-funded legal capacity for enabling that public fight.

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All this season, “How to Fix the Internet” has been focusing on the tools and technology of freedom – and one of the most important tools of freedom is a library. Access to knowledge not only creates an informed populace that democracy requires, but also gives people the tools they need to thrive. And the internet has radically expanded access to knowledge in ways that earlier generations could only have dreamed of – so long as that knowledge is allowed to flow freely.

(You can also find this episode on the Internet Archive and on YouTube.)

A passionate advocate for public internet access and a successful entrepreneur, Brewster Kahle has spent his life intent on a singular focus: providing universal access to all knowledge. The Internet Archive, which he founded in 1996, now preserves 99+ petabytes of data - the books, Web pages, music, television, government information, and software of our cultural heritage – and works with more than 400 library and university partners to create a digital library that’s accessible to all. The Archive is known for the Wayback Machine, which lets users search the history of almost one trillion web pages. But it also archives images, software, video and audio recordings, documents, and it contains dozens of resources and projects that fill a variety of gaps in cultural, political, and historical knowledge. Kahle joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss how the free flow of knowledge makes all of us more free.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

The role AI plays in digitizing, preserving, and easing access to all kinds of information
How EFF helped the Internet Archive fight off the government’s demand for information about library patrons
The importance of building a decentralized, distributed web to finding and preserving information for all
Why building revolutionary, world-class libraries like the Internet Archive requires not only money and technology, but also people willing to dedicate their lives to the work
How nonprofits are crucial to filling societal gaps left by businesses, governments, and academia

Brewster Kahle is the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, which serves millions of people each day and is among the world’s largest libraries. After studying AI at and graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982, Kahle helped launch the company Thinking Machines, a parallel supercomputer maker. In 1989, he helped create the internet's first publishing system called Wide Area Information Server (WAIS); WAIS Inc. was later sold to AOL. In 1996, Kahle co-founded Alexa Internet, which helps catalog the Web, selling it to Amazon.com in 1999. He is a former member of EFF’s Board of Directors.