
Encyclopedia Britannica Print Edition Discontinued After 244 Years - marklabedz
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2012/03/change/
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jacobolus
See discussion on the page about the NYTimes story about this:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3700635>

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nsomaru
It's sad.

Much of the knowledge that serves me well today was gained as a child sprawled
across the carpet in our 'study' just flipping through encyclopaedia pages and
reading what interested me.

Children of subsequent generations will never know that joy.

That being said, it's all part of the general flow of things. Change is
inevitable!

~~~
akg
Agreed. I had a collection Brittanica back in the day and I remember randomly
perusing through it and finding interesting tidbits of information I would
otherwise be ignorant of. What a resource it was. That experience is not found
by today's technology, yet. Wikipedia has a "random article" link, but it's
not the same as flipping through a Book and stopping when you see interesting
key-words/pictures.

Maybe there is an iPad app in here somewhere that mimics this behavior ;-)

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nsomaru
Hah! That's giving Job's API's too much credit :)

The feeling of pages ruffling past your thumb as the words flew past you at
lightning speed, the slight upward draught created by the screaming
pages...and suddenly _stop_ _thud_ _stillness_ \-- not knowing whether it was
a word or a colour or a picture that caught your attention, but here you were,
another page, but a whole new world to discover. The whole process almost
imitates the way your mind moves -- fast movement between subjects...and still
contemplation within them.

Contrast that with the "tap" or "swipe" on an iPad or the "click" of a mouse
and it all just seems a little...bland.

This got me thinking about API's and the limitations of hardware in providing
experiences, and then I realised that the ultimate consumer computing device
would be some kind of "possibility field" that could morph into whatever was
required by the user.

The hardware itself would be an API called by the user's interactions... _ah_
one can dream, right? :)

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phon
Although I find this development far from unexpected, one cannot feel a pang
of sadness to see an institution as celebrated the Encyclopedia Britannica
going ever so gently into the good night.

Even today, I remember using the venerable (1911) eleventh edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica as a starting point for numerous research papers on
topics as diverse as the r the history of classical mathematics to the repeal
of the English Corn Laws. While the information was often far from definitive,
it always provided an excellent starting point for subsequent research. An
added pleasure of a well used set of those volumes was the traces of previous
seekers of knowledge. A forgotten piece of pater here and a faint underlining
there could be a great reassurance when you though your were off in the weeds
alone.

While the physical print runs fo the Britannica have come to an end, happily
several of the classic editions are now in the public domain and are thus
accessible to a vastly greater portion of humanity than was every envisioned
by the founders of this noble project.

~~~
greyman
Why "going to good night"? They will still exist in the digital form...

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aidenn0
Browsing their website, the print edition costs over one thousand USD. It is
listed as containing "over 65,000 articles"

The most expensive software edition is $40. It is listed as containing "Over
100,000 articles"

Surely it doesn't cost over a thousand dollars to print 32 books?

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eslachance
But how much does it cost to staff the people that actually do the research
for it, update the encyclopedia, etc?

Printing books isn't just about printing books. Someone actually has to come
up with the contents and this person has to be paid!

~~~
sparky_z
I think you've completely missed his point. The digital version has even more
content than the print version, but only costs $40.

~~~
eslachance
They're doing digital _right_. They know that they will sell many more copies
of the digital version, because it's digital and because they lowered the
price mark.

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akg
It is sad for nostalgic reasons, but what a brilliant sign of an amazing feat
that we have accomplished since the dawn of the internet age. Print material
was the only way to disseminate information for about 500 years and this marks
a significant milestone for information distribution in the digital age.

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mwexler
The online version is free for one week beginning March 13, 2012

