As Encyclopedia Britannica so aptly stated on its blog yesterday, for 244 years its “thick volumes” have “stood on the shelves of homes, libraries, and businesses everywhere, a source of enlightenment, as well as comfort, to their owners and users around the world.”
Think about that for a second. For more than two centuries, Encyclopedia Britannica has been providing men, women, and children something on printed pages that’s both incredibly invaluable and incredibly useful: knowledge.
That’s now ended, though, as the company has announced it will no longer provide a print form of its glorious 32 volumes of encyclopedia beauty. Once the current inventory is sapped, that’s it, no more new printed pages of facts, biographies, and historical events for flipping through at your own leisure. No more earmarking pages of interest. No more sinking away entire rainy afternoons or snowy mornings pouring over recounting of the Roman Empire or the demise of dinosaurs or how baseball was invented or the significance of the Industrial Revolution—at least not on the printed page.
Encyclopedia Britannica might characterize the discontinuing of its printed volumes as “just another historical data point in the evolution of human knowledge” and try to console me by stating the “encyclopedia will love on—in bigger, more numerous, and more vibrant digital forms,” but I don’t sum up the situation as such, and I don’t feel comforted knowing I can log into a Web site or pop in a DVD and get a digital fix of info.
What I feel is the sadness of knowing another piece of my personal past has evaporated in an instant. I feel as if another piece of my existence has been altered and twisted and reshaped in ways I feel are unfortunate. I feel the same way I do when thinking too long about the slow death of albums or print media. I feel just a bit more lost in an ever-altering world, a world that already had me reeling and feeling out of place on any given day.
Look, I’m no old-timer who scorns anything that advances civilization. Far from it. I adore certain aspects of technology, both for the convenience they enable and the absolute close proximity they put vast amounts of wildly varying information, entertainment, and more to me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel sullen about another staple of my youth dying a slow death and is being left behind by evolution.
Why so torn up about a bunch of books, anyway? Because the encyclopedia set my parents so wisely purchased and made available in our home while I was growing up provided me endless hours of escape and learning and friendship. That set, bound in white covers with black print and appropriately categorized in alphabetical order in an old wooden bookshelf, was an island to where I could travel at any time I desired and feel absolutely at piece. Long before there was cable television or the Internet or video games to occupy children’s minds and energy, I would spend entire weekend afternoons perusing whatever would come my way in the S-T volume or verify what my teacher had just taught about Abraham Lincoln in the L-M pages. That encyclopedia set supplied entertainment, higher learning, discovery, amazement, horror, wonderment, disbelief, exuberance, and far more. The volumes were a teacher, mentor, guru, tour guide, and window to a far more vast and fantastic world than I could have ever conceived without their presence.
Upon reading the Encyclopedia Britannica news, my friend Steve, an instructor, may have summed up my feelings better than I can by saying: “Remember reading stuff and you were like, “Oh man, I am going there or I am going to do that or . . .? I also liked it when I read something my dad did not know or tried to BS his way through not knowing. I still laugh to this day when some kid starts a report or cites "According to the Encyclopedia Britannica . . ."
Better, Steve is right on point by saying, “The biggest thing about encyclopedias-in my opinion--is that they gave you just enough info to either satisfy your need OR hopefully make you then go the to the next step and get more info and really think and construct your thoughts. Nowadays--all the info is there, and most time people cut and paste and miss the thinking part or the constructing part.”
“Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact,” Springsteen sang in “Atlantic City.” That’s a shame.
Still, despite my kids and most likely 99% of their peers not blinking an eye to changes such as this, I do feel blessed and fortunate to not only have been able to partake in something that gave me so much pleasure and that enriched my life so many immeasurable ways but to also be able to recognize the long-lasting importance of those gifts.
No comments:
Post a Comment