How The Web Ruined The Encyclopedia Business 623
prostoalex writes "Don't remember an encyclopedia salesman knocking at your door lately? Turns out, fewer Americans are purchasing layaway plans for heavy-bound multiple-volume sets (once sold at $1,400) and turning to the Web for answers, according to AP/Miami Herald. What's more interesting is that even the software encyclopedias are not selling as well, with Google changing the landscape of finding good reference information. 'Microsoft's $70 Encarta is the best seller but industrywide sales for encyclopedia software fell 7.3 percent in 2003 from 2002,' says Associated Press article."
Something that should've been in the original post (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. I'm sure everybody knows about it by now, but it's a great source of information for just about anything you can imagine.
You are correct (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't this one of the selling points of CD-ROMs? (Score:5, Informative)
For bound encyclopedias, it's a cost/benefit analysis. For $1400, you can get 2 1/2 years of high speed internet access, with pretty much all the information you can handle. Encyclopedias are just too expensive for what you get.
Response (Score:5, Informative)
Ask and ye shall recieve (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Computers are much better for looking things up (Score:3, Informative)
Regarding Wikipedia and trust, the "page history" feature on the left can help. Not only will the page history protect you against recent vandalism (i.e. in case you see a damaged page before someone has a chance to correct it); a frequently edited page with many contributors may be more reliable than a page that had less peer review.
Re:You are correct (Score:5, Informative)
2) You make two mistaken assumptions. (A) Not everyone edits all articles - people tend to stick to what they know. Therefore, articles are generally edited by informed users. (B) A lot of Wikipedia's changes (50%, if I had to guess) come from a relatively small pool of very active contributors (200 or so), most of whom are very well educated. If you look up an article on Nuclear physics, you'll probably get something that was written by someone majoring in/with a BS in physics or chemistry. So it's not PHDs, but it's not Joe Q Average either.
Re:A friend would like to buy a set (Score:1, Informative)
1911 Britannica Online (Score:2, Informative)
There is another option as well (Score:4, Informative)
ibiblio [ibiblio.org] has started a project recently called Wikinfo [internet-e...opedia.org]. They have a very similar look to the Wikipedia and even link to it for articles they don't have, but they have adopted a different editorial policy [internet-e...opedia.org]. Specifically, they have chosen to use a sympathetic point of view [internet-e...opedia.org].
Re:You are correct (Score:3, Informative)
This is oversimplified, but gets the point across. In addition, in some so-called 'soft sciences' (such as psychology) where there are few hard mathematical rules, than many theories are buoyed more by popular support of the evidence than by anything else -- although, to be fair, this is rapidly changing (as far as psychology goes) with our increased understanding of neurochemistry.
static vs dynamic (Score:2, Informative)
I tend to put newspapers in the same group. Why look at day old news when you can get up to the minute news at cnn.com [cnn.com] or google [google.com] or a plethora of other sites. I would much prefer looking at the website of my local news affiliate and taking what news I am interested in then and there than have to wade through a paper with all those continued on page n articles or listen through an entire boring newscast to get at the one piece of interesting news for the day. my $.02
Re:You are correct (Score:5, Informative)
Nice one. So you slip in Evolution with Junk Science, and hope that this makes you sound reasonable.
Evolution is taught as fact in the same way that gravity is taught as fact. The theory of Evolution is as valid based on our current evidence as the three laws of thermodynamics. Now Einstein came along and said "hey - what about this relativity thing I've come up with?" and lo and behold, Isaacs theories didn't go far enough. Does that mean we all float off into space because gravity doesn't work ? Does that mean I can't use a parabola to descibe the motion of a ball thrown through the air ? Nope. Same thing with Evolution. The evidence is there, and hundreds of scientific disciplines rely on this same evidence that supports Evolution for everything from dating ancient objects, to geological surveying and microbiology. Evolution happened... although the specifics of how are still very much under the microscope...
The suggestion that Global warming idea is on the same footing as the Theory of Evolution is a neat distraction, but it doesn't fly.
It's fine to doubt the integrity of specific scientists, or even the political process within the community at large - doubt is a good thing. But lets look at the evidence.. can you point to a specific failure ? Where did the scientific process fall down exactly ? Cold Fusion... nope, their peers caught that.. Global Warming, huh? Jury is still out on that one, waiting for more evidence...
No, I'm not buying it.
Even if the Theory of Evolution is completely wrong*, creationism cannot be pedalled as a scientific theory. There's absolutely no way of falsifying it. It's not testable, because it can never be revised upon discovering new evidence. It remains immutable, and evidence is routinely discarded or rationalized to fit the theory, rather than the other way around.
Creation-Science isn't science.
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* it isn't.
encyclopedias worse than MS Ofice racket (Score:3, Informative)
There simply isn't that much new information created in a given year or group of years, and what does happen is generally quite easy to find online for the first couple years after its occurance in contemporary news form.
Even small to medium sized libraries aren't likely to buy a new encyclopedia edition every year, 2 years, or whatever. My parents still have an enyclopedia set from sometime in the 1970's that is pertinent for a very vast amount of the information you might want to look up. Granted, some of the scientific information is a bit dated, as is the "history" that has occured in the last 25 years, but that's a relatively insignificant amount of time and knowledge.
I have a copy of Encarta from 1995 that is still more than capable of providing more information than Id likely need for a given topic given cursory interest, when and if I'm unable to find the info online.
Re:You are correct (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Nobody educated believed in the flat earth. (Score:3, Informative)
The truth is that everyone knew the Earth was round, but the opinions differed on the circumference. The critics were actually correct, saying that India is too far from Spain. Columbus mistakingly believed that Earth is much smaller than it actually is and India is very close. He was lucky, though, to find another continent (though it would be impossible to miss), or he would undoubtly die on the long way to India.