More from Alan Jacobs

 Quoting Alan Jacobs may become a weekly feature! Here's the context for the discussion Cory Doctorow's concept of the Memex I wrote about below. This is J R R Tolkien's concept of "The Mathom-House" from "Concerning Hobbits."

"So, though there was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the museum at Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort."