Encyclopædia Britannica's 2010 edition to be its last

Sad day.. Britannica has always been a very wellmade, thorough encyclopedia set, something to take pride in owning. I think everyone should own an encyclopedia set.

I think it would be better in most cases if newer technologies augmented traditional ones and stood beside them, rather than usurping and pushing them aside - google and the internet are not a replacement for everything information-related that had existed up until their nascence - e.g. long-lasting power-outage, emp (electro-magnetic pulse) knockout..
There will never be a replacement for good old-fashioned books

 

Let's just hope the world won't end any time soon or by the end of this year as some people predict. A computer without electricity is waste material, a book on the other hand can be read in daylight, and knowledge can be preserved.

 

They were always too expensive, not that they weren't worth the money. I hate to see the day when books are no more. When they go all electronic, whoever distributes them can write history to say whatever they want it to.

 

LOL, are you serious?

Mass printing requires much more energy, material, time, money. Just imagine if 6+ billions persons wanted their "own" physical Encyclopedia Britannica (2010 edition) sets.

With (only or mainly) printed information it's easier to manipulate people.

And, printed information is way harder to correct/distribute.

 

How is this not the case with books already? Do you know how many of my history books have told me that Christopher Columbus was a hero and how many have claimed he's a villain? Every other book tells a different story. Bias persists whether it's electronic or paper.

 

But alas, security concerns still exist with the printed page.
I'm referring, of course, to book worms.

 

I doubt that the printed page is going to disappear any time soon. I own antique (Victorian) editions of Milton, Matthew Arnold & other poets. In a hundred years or so I'm reckoning those editions will still exist, unlike me or my computers.

 

I'd suspect that the paper and energy used to print books doesn't compare with the quantities wasted by printers. There should be room for both in this world.

 

You make a good point. I guess more than anything mine was that once I have a book nobody can change it or take it (by reasonable means anyway.) If I have books on a Kindle or iPad they could be changed on the fly or removed altogether. It isn't MY book anymore.

 

It's also much harder to censor material after it's been printed. The really good thing about printed material is that no one can tell what you're reading or when without being there or having a camera pointed right at you. With online material, someone knows or can monitor what you see unless you take serious precautions. It's also much more difficult for someone to claim "intellectual property" to knowledge that existed in printed form long before they tried to make such a claim. Modern medicine drawing on old knowledge comes to mind here.

 

Well, my own history books are telling me that Columbus discovered America. However, logic tells me how could he have discovered America when the land was already inhabited by human beings. Maybe just maybe Britannica can expound on that before going away.

Thanks.

 

Actually I would love to see an old set of these at this point. I'd bet what was in them 200 years ago was much more interesting than what is in them now.

 

I still read my old version of The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction (Ed, Peter Nicholls), which I bought in a sale for 50p (about a dollar?) in my local lending library nearly a decade ago. It is still a wealth of knowledge, if a little out of date. There is also SFE Online. I do miss all of those great monochrome pictures that in the book version though.

 

$1,400 each set? How many books it is?

 

My set is almost 40 years old...

 

What! That's a huge amount of books IMO.
Looks interesting, i loved to go page by page with my cousin's encyclopedia when i was a child.
But it was not even close to this one, it was like 2 of these ones.

 

books?

what are those?

i haven't used one of them in years.