What should we let be lost?

It's certainly not a shame to lose most things, since most things stink. But (like the rainforest) there's no telling what might turn out to be of historical or artistic (or medicinal) value.

It's fun just to think of people 1000 years from now really getting into, say, MASH or The West Wing. We have only tiny snippets of most cultures from 1000 years ago. Scholars write whole books on Anglo-Saxon riddles. What will they make of 25 years of The Simpsons? ("We postulate that there once was a 2D film called Showgirls that was about female dancers and was considered a laughingstock. Sadly, this film has been lost to history, so we can't fully appreciate Homer's reference here.")

Yeah, you never know what might be appreciated or viewed as significant by people in the future.

Emily Dickinson's poems weren't widely read in her lifetime. They were just papers in her house. Later, people were like, "Oh hey, this woman was a genius. How 'bout that?" Now she's required reading in every American poetry course.

So you never know. I'd err on the side of saving shit if you can.

It's not up to me. I am here to watch and observe, not decide things.

That's just what the government wants you to think

I will freely admit to being a bit of a hoarder in that I save things for years because I think I might need them some day. Given the way we weep and cry over the loss of information at the Library of Alexandria burning or other such tragedies, I'm inclined to say save it, at least writings and movies and such.

And even there is no long term "plan" for saving media (save for an old salt mine) many schools have created databases of material for online libraries. So, I imagine it is only a matter of time before a larger database is created to preserve knowledge.

Indeed.

Really, I don't know why we are worried. Torrents will out live us all and the NSA will documented everything.