(E) says, "Value judgments made by today’s archivists will influence how future generations view and understand the past."
We're looking for the answer choice that's something that the author likely believes. In the passage, the author notes that there is not enough time for archivists to filter through and save all of the available data before at least some of this data deteriorates too much. From this, we know that the activists' judgments of what's valuable influence what subsequent generations of people will see as preserved records of current and prior generations. This mirrors the author's discussion of Plato's works in that we are fortunate to have discovered his works, but other really important works were probably lost, so we never gained knowledge from them. Additionally, our conceptions of the past have been colored by the judgments and decision of former archivists to overlook more carefully storing and preserving the now lost writings. This leads us to (E), which is the correct answer choice.
Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any more questions!
Meredithon November 12, 2019
Why not B though?
shunheon December 28, 2019
Hi @Meredith,
The issue with (B) is that it is the opposite of a view that the author holds. If we look at the last lines, we see that the author believes that archivists should "sort the essential from the dispensable." Earlier, in lines 43044, the author writes that decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of "should be informed by an assessment of the value of each document." (B) tells us the opposite of this: that archivist should simply store everything regardless of its value, as we can't predict what the future values will be. Hope this helps!
