A manual for civilization

[Guru Coyote]

Yes, Vernor Vinge uses this concept a lot. The book mentioned earlier would be:
The Children of the Sky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But generally all of the books in the "Zones of Thought" universe have this aspect.

 

[wordwalker]

On the other hand, Darkover Landfall ends with the crashed spaceship's captain realizing that preserving the ship's computer as the one source of higher knowledge is leaving his people with an oracle they'll become dependant on; he destroys it. Heavy-handed, but I suppose the more of a black box the storage system is, the more people might stop seeing it as raw knowledge they'd keep adapting to their own needs. (See: plagiarism vs research.)

Besides, everyone knows computers are evil, and putting something on paper makes it good.

Edit: Yes, mostly it's just heavy-handed, and I'm not saying "too much" knowledge is better destroyed. Just that how the knowledge is used, and how much it's respected--or else rejected--can also be a side of the story.

 

[Guru Coyote]

The point you bring up, word walker, is how the knowledge is preserved and later accessed. I think it's a lot like the difference between step-by-step how to's that make no effort in explaining the why and now... and "manuals for self exploration."

Leaving a a replicator won't help anyone, but teaching them to make a fire might.

 

[Nibbler]

Foundation by Asimov

This thread has my brain on fire. I was looking for a Sci-fi idea and this is it.

Can anybody point me in the direction of some good novels that play off this idea?

Daichungak, I recommend you check out the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. Here's a helpful link. Foundation series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

There's also a great book called Wool by Hugh Howley.

Howley recently came to fame as the first self-published author to sign a deal with a traditional house for the print rights while still retaining all e-book rights. It's a good read and has a similar plot line.