I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
arstechnica.com
I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
1–10 of 199 posts
Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
#2So arstechnica now has native ads?
Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
#3In 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.
Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
#4So arstechnica now has native ads?
> Aside from the shark photo and the print error, I am genuinely proud to own a modern World Book Encyclopedia. And I say that freely, having purchased the set out of pocket myself.
If the author had to buy it with his own money, it's a pretty lame sponsored post.
Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
#5I loved reading my grandfather's 1980s edition World Book when visiting, pre internet. There was something kind of magical about that much information in one place at the time, but at a house instead of a library!
Edit: I also remember browsing the Macintosh version of the Encyclopedia Britannica as one of my first school computer activities.
Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
#6[flagged]
Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
#7Learned a lot from this as a kid.
Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
#8In 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?
Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
#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 buyers) But this price is hard to justify. Does it cost $949 to print and ship, when comparing the online edition to the physical edition?
Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print
#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 want a huge shark photo on my bookshelf. It seems like an odd thing to force on a $1200 purchase, especially when it could easily be put on dust covers that could be removed to leave a more austere, proper looking reference book.