Moreover, much of taxonomists' time is taken up not with describing new species but simply with sorting out old ones. Many, according to Godfray, "spend most of their career trying to interpret the work of nineteenth-century systematicists: deconstructing their often inadequate published descriptions or scouring the world's museums for type material that is often in very poor condition." Godfray particularly stresses the absence of attention being paid to the systematizing possibilities of the Internet. The fact is that taxonomy by and large is still quaintly wedded to paper.

In an attempt to haul things into the modern age, in 2001 Kevin Kelly, cofounder of Wired magazine, launched an enterprise called the All Species Foundation with the aim of finding every living organism and recording it on a database. The cost of such an exercise has been estimated at anywhere from $2 billion to as much as $50 billion. As of the spring of 2002, the foundation had just $1.2 million in funds and four full-time employees. If, as the numbers suggest, we have perhaps 100 million species of insects yet to find, and if our rates of discovery continue at the present pace, we should have a definitive total for insects in a little over fifteen thousand years. The rest of the animal kingdom may take a little longer.