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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

#31

Post by JKCalhoun »

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.

Funny to think that parents purchased an encyclopedia for the family the way a later generation would purchase a home computer for the family.

Actually, maybe funny is the wrong word, it's kind of sweet.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#36

Post by BadCookie »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #10

>When she saw the large photo of a shark spread across the spines of the 22 volumes, she frowned and said, "I don't want to see a big-ass shark every day when I walk in the room." I've got to be honest, reading this I went through a similar range of emotions as the author: Surprise that a print encyclopedia still exists, curiosity about it, and a nibbling desire to buy one. But I gotta agree with his wife: I don't wa…

The 2022 edition has a dinosaur on it while the 2021 edition has eagles, for what it’s worth. I am tempted to buy the eagle one for only $350 … but I don’t really have the space for it!

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#37

Post by Cthulhu_ »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #30
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.

Except I don't flip to a random page on the internet. Like you, I am remembering the serendipity of the encyclopedia (and libraries for that matter).

Nah, it's sites like HN and Reddit that curate the randomness for us. There is / was a service, the name escapes me for now, that would install itself as a hotbar in your browser, press it and it would send you to a random web page, depending on your configured preferences / interests. I'm sure the name will come to me randomly soon enough.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#38

Post by vasco »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #30
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.

Except I don't flip to a random page on the internet. Like you, I am remembering the serendipity of the encyclopedia (and libraries for that matter).

There's a toplevel option called "random article" as well as the shortcut ctrl+option+x to go to a random article. If anything it's a way better serendipity generator.
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