After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
March 14th, 2012The Internet, and all of the data on it, could disappear in the blink of an eye.
Have a nice day.
Via: New York Times:
After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.
Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said.
In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project.
“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”
In the 1950s, having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational middle class. Buying a set was often a financial stretch, and many families had to pay for it in monthly installments.
But in recent years, print reference books have been almost completely overtaken by the Internet and its vast spread of resources, including specialized Web sites and the hugely popular — and free — online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
Yep, its kind of scary to me to see people reading on Kindle’s. I can’t help it. Just imagining what these humans will do without constant electricity, let alone internet access boggles my mind.
I work with great people these days but their reliance on the IPhones boggles my mind. I had to ask what an AP was.
I know that sounds dumb but I don’t care. All these devices people are hooked on require electricity and I don’t think humans should be consuming that commondity. Especially here in the U.S. where a lot of power comes from coal and nuclear.
I got a cell phone so in case of emergency, people could call me. These days I use the phone as an alarm clock.
Surely nothing will ever happen to the grid. Never,
We all live on the edge of destrution -those of us who rely on electronic communication to get through our day. Out of our hand in a heartbeat. Have a “Happy” Ides of March. Yes, we are in a cosmic storm not seen for a long time. Have a nice day.
This saddens me greatly, though the writing has been on the wall for a while. There are so many assumptions made about electronic data being available as we go forward that it is scary.
Anyone know how to read a Bernoulli disk circa 1989, or an 8 inch S Bus disk, circa 1983? And those two examples are only 25 and 30 years old. There is this assumption that what we have now won’t ever change…
Hubris to the max!
i spent hundreds and hundreds of hours as a kid staring at encyclopedias and even more time staring at atlases. we had one set of american encyclopedias that were bought for my brother that were published the year i was born, and another set of english encyclopedias bought for my uncles that were from the 1920s. just amazing documents. and then there were various assorted mini or specialized encyclopedias. but the huge format atlas got most of my attention. it was about A2 size (open, it was as big as a tabloid newspaper, or maybe bigger). the Web does not replace this stuff.
“I had to ask what an AP was.”
Associated Press?
I think Eileen is referring to apps, as in programs for mobile phones and tablet computers.
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I am glad Kevin still supports the ‘low tech’ paper based information ‘apps’ on this great website. EMP resistant; self-sustaining low power consumption; built-in stop, start, pause; best of all, more fun to read sitting in the bathroom.
I just bought the hardcover 880 page AMA Family Medical Guide for my ‘bug out bag’. Complete with diagnositic flowcharts. Thinking about collecting the Army field manuals as well.
When things start getting wonky and the SHTF … wireless hotspots are gone. The great Godgle and Wikipedia will be myths passed to grandchildren.
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Back in the early nineties in University I worked in Govt Docs in the library. We had all of the newspapers on microfilm and I would do research on various conspiracy type ideas. (Pre-911 so it was mostly JFK or various Bush senior shenanigans).
Occasionally we would receive notices to remove material (long before the Memory Hole, but I would always try to figure out why they were removing various documents). But the microfilm seemed sacred. They could destroy the paper records, but they couldn’t change the news of the day once it was photographed. It only took a few years for libraries to switch from Microfilm to digital records. Now history can be edited as easily as Wikipedia.
I know we’re the freaks in our neighborhood with a house full of dead trees, but I just don’t think people see the value of (historic) knowledge anymore. The loss of the Memory Hole site before I made a backup was a real eye opener for me. Now with ease of site take-downs it would be a quick process to lose touch with much of your knowledge base.
*sigh*
@RobertS I’ve got some 3.5″ floppies and a zipdisk backup I can no longer access from less than 10 years ago. The process is accelerating. Looking through old online links I find that 95+% of them older than five years are dead.
I started work as a software engineer in 1981, and actually used the 8″ floppy disk – they really were floppy because the disk container was cardboard. We also used reel to reel tape drives. I just missed paper tape.
I have to say I do love the smartphones – basically a PC in your pocket, plus phone, camera, video, calender, internet, calculator, level, compass, email, text, answering machine, walkman, navigation, news, weather, tv, movies, notes, picture gallery, pocketwatch. Basically everything in your pocket – truly amazing!
But I do not get the kindle thing, especially if you lose or drop it. Thank god for the library – something that is really useful, so it probably won’t be long before they kill it.