slight edit (but important):

The preservation strategy in every age has been data redundancy, but it's much easier to duplicate and copy digital information.

Glad we had all those monks copying the copies of copies so we still have all that ancient philosophy. =)

Yes. Agree, but what I meant is that the materials used to record information mattered more before. If you write something in stone (like the Rosetta stone, for example), it's extremely durable even if you do not make any copy of it. For oil paintings and sculptures, copies were usually not the preservation strategy, rather the protection of the originals in trusted places.