Wednesday, March 14, 2012

After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses


After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses, article.

244 years in continual publication!! And the digital age has ended it. If that doesn't illustrate the power and pervasiveness of digital publication...

“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a Chicago-based company, 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.”

You can't argue with that, a paper book is a bitch to update! Especially one the size of EB. Whereas any bit of a web site can be updated in minutes. And these days, data and knowledge changes so fast, that nothing is too fast.