Ben Haskett

“[I]n practice, most species looked to the Library and only the Library for knowledge.... What was the point of researching what must have been discovered a thousand times over by those who came before? It was simple, for instance, to choose advanced spaceship designs from Library archives and follow them blindly, understanding only a fraction of what was built. Earth had a few such ships, and they were marvels. The Terragens Council ... once almost succumbed to that attractive logic. Many humans urged co-opting of Galactic models that older races had themselves co-opted from ancient designs. They cited the example of Japan, which in the nineteenth century had faced a similar problem—how to survive amongst nations immeasurably more powerful than itself. Meiji Japan concentrated all its energy on learning to imitate its neighbors, and succeeded in becoming just like them, in the end.
A majority on the Terragens Council, including nearly all of the cetacean members, disagreed. They considered the Library a honey pot—tempting, and possibly nourishing, but also a terrible trap.
They teared the "Golden Age" syndrome... a temptation to "look backward"—to find wisdom in the oldest, dustiest texts, instead of the latest journal.”
― David Brin, Startide Rising