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I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

arstechnica.com

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Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#11

Post by tomashubelbauer »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #8
bryanlarsen wrote: post #3

In the 80's the encyclopedia filled the same niche that a smartphone does for me now. Whenever I had a small number of minutes to kill I grabbed a random volume and flipped open to a random page.

Do you think there was better ROI to that time spent than now with the smartphone? Like, you "killed" those 5mins by learning something (however esoteric it may have been) versus sucked into a nonsensical Tik Tok vortex?

> In the 80's the encyclopedia filled the same niche that a smartphone does for me now.

I took this to mean the niche is "learning something interesting in a short amount of time" not "killing a short amount of time" so to me the OP implied they were using the smartphone to learn and not browse TikTok.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#12

Post by cafard »

acatton wrote: post #9

> At a time when most information comes to us for free online (with strings attached, of course), it's easy to have sticker shock at the $1,199 retail price for the 2023 edition of World Book, although shoppers might occasionally find it for as low as $799 on Amazon (to compare, the online subscription costs $250 per year) I understand that there is some economy of scale issue. (I would expect them to have very few b…

My guess is that the price is comparable (adjusted for inflation) to what my parents' generation paid for encyclopedias in the 1950s and 1960s.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#13

Post by namdnay »

acatton wrote: post #9

> At a time when most information comes to us for free online (with strings attached, of course), it's easy to have sticker shock at the $1,199 retail price for the 2023 edition of World Book, although shoppers might occasionally find it for as low as $799 on Amazon (to compare, the online subscription costs $250 per year) I understand that there is some economy of scale issue. (I would expect them to have very few b…

How many online encyclopedias are there? How many print encyclopedias are there? Price s aren’t (only) determined by costs

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#15

Post by Veen »

acatton wrote: post #9

> At a time when most information comes to us for free online (with strings attached, of course), it's easy to have sticker shock at the $1,199 retail price for the 2023 edition of World Book, although shoppers might occasionally find it for as low as $799 on Amazon (to compare, the online subscription costs $250 per year) I understand that there is some economy of scale issue. (I would expect them to have very few b…

The final edition of Encyclopaedia Brittanica was $1,395.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#16

Post by pstuart »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #3

In the 80's the encyclopedia filled the same niche that a smartphone does for me now. Whenever I had a small number of minutes to kill I grabbed a random volume and flipped open to a random page.

Same in the early 70s. Bonus was the Time Life science series.

There's something to be said about not having ubiquitous portable distraction devices to encourage more "productive" uses of time.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#17

Post by bryanlarsen »

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #11
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there was better ROI to that time spent than now with the smartphone? Like, you "killed" those 5mins by learning something (however esoteric it may have been) versus sucked into a nonsensical Tik Tok vortex?

> In the 80's the encyclopedia filled the same niche that a smartphone does for me now. I took this to mean the niche is "learning something interesting in a short amount of time" not "killing a short amount of time" so to me the OP implied they were using the smartphone to learn and not browse TikTok.

It's both? I have the attention span of a gnat so whenever I'm forced to wait in one place for more than 10 seconds I pull my phone out. I don't pull up TikTok, but I pull up HN or similar. Theoretically HN et al can be educational, but it's mostly functioning as an alternative to TikTok.

This behaviour is normal today, but 40 years ago people other than me had the ability to wait patiently.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#19

Post by QuarterReptile »

acatton wrote: post #9

> At a time when most information comes to us for free online (with strings attached, of course), it's easy to have sticker shock at the $1,199 retail price for the 2023 edition of World Book, although shoppers might occasionally find it for as low as $799 on Amazon (to compare, the online subscription costs $250 per year) I understand that there is some economy of scale issue. (I would expect them to have very few b…

That sounds so cheap to me. My 11th edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica cost maybe $4000, and I have to do maintenance to fight off dust mites and red rot. But it looks very good, and it's widely considered the best Encyclopedia. Apprently Wikipedia started out as a project to digitize 11th Britannica. It's public domain now, so you can read it on your phone free if you're interested in ruining all the charm.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#20

Post by thesuitonym »

cafard wrote: post #12
acatton wrote: post #9

> At a time when most information comes to us for free online (with strings attached, of course), it's easy to have sticker shock at the $1,199 retail price for the 2023 edition of World Book, although shoppers might occasionally find it for as low as $799 on Amazon (to compare, the online subscription costs $250 per year) I understand that there is some economy of scale issue. (I would expect them to have very few b…

My guess is that the price is comparable (adjusted for inflation) to what my parents' generation paid for encyclopedias in the 1950s and 1960s.

I think it's actually less when adjusted for inflation. I recall full sets like this being close to $2000 even way back when. Of course, back then you'd often "subscribe" to them, paying a smaller monthly fee and getting one book per month until you had the full set.
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