Purveyor of Forgotten Curiosities

The New York Times is reporting that the 7,000 languages that exist in the world are disappearing at a rate of 2 per week.

Of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists say, nearly half are in danger of extinction and are likely to disappear in this century. In fact, they are now falling out of use at a rate of about one every two weeks. When they disappear, they leave behind no dictionary, no text, no record of the accumulated knowledge and history of a vanished culture.More

The author did next to nothing to convince me that this is a bad thing. Obviously diversity is a good thing, as is knowledge of history and cultures. However, there is such a thing as information overload. Is it really necessary to exhaustively document the language and culture represented by one guy who can barely remember most of the words? Is the result even going to be an accurate representation of that language and culture? Do we need to study them to the extent that we are producing children's readers for them?

The world moves on, as it always has and will. I'm sure that there existed in the past many rich and vibrant cultures that left no mark and are today entirely unknown. Would it benefit us to have detailed records of all of those people, their culture and technology? Maybe. But at what point do you stop reading about history and get busy creating it?

It makes sense to preserve the past, but at some point there is a line between 'purveyor of forgotten curiosities' and 'compulsive packrat'.