Britannica ends print publication

[Actaeon]

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-new...ital-publishing

 

Citizens of the internet, you have won! The demise of print journalism (discussed in an earlier thread) is just the beginning! As iPads become textbooks and the Hitchhiker's Guide becomes a reality (Kindle 3G + Wikipedia + "Don't Panic" sticker), the demise of print reference is upon us!

 

Surely there could be no downside.

 

Is there any sense among this community that we are becoming increasingly reliant on a fragile, electronic infrastructure? A week after the Y2K scare, we forgot all our fears and heaped every service we could on the internet and computers.

 

Whether or not the quality of publications will be impacted by the digital transfer (a discussion that, as noted, petered out in "Print Journalism"), should we be concerned that our era is recorded in such formats?

 

Will archaeologists of the future require data recovery skills? Can a hard drive last as long as a sheet of papyrus, much less stone tablet? Should someone take the Dr. Mcninja route and print out the internet? If, by design or accident, the West found itself unplugged, could we stand on our own? Are concerns like these suited only to survivalist crazies, or does it nag at more moderate minds?

[Enraged Slith]

I would probably die of boredom before anything else if our electronic infrastructure failed. You'd find me holed up in a closet a week later, clawing at the walls and asking in broken and guttural phrases just how many movies Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson starred in together.

[Dintiradan]

This article points out that Britannia was dying even before the 'Net was a mainstream thing. But yes, reliance on computers is A Thing.

 

Still, though, what do you want to optimize? How well society will survive in the slight change of a digital disaster? Or how well society operates now?

[Alorael at Large]

Digital archaeology is already happening, and the problems run deeper than just hardware failure. Software moves on too, and it can be hard to access data in formats no longer read by anything modern. Programs may require the retention of a compatible operating system can become lost when hardware that runs the OS is no longer common. Even copy protection efforts can stymie conservation!

 

—Alorael, who wouldn't worry about catastrophic failure of all electronics everywhere. It is concerning to think of major breaches in the connecting points between parts of the internet; entire countries can be and have been taken offline. He'd say the proper solution is zealous mirroring and backups, though, not just reliance on hard copies.

[Randomizer]

"Do you want to live in a world with no USB ports?"

-- Dr. Sheldon Cooper The Big Bang Theory

 

Looks over at a box of punch cards and thinks that at least they make good shims.

[Dantius]

Wikipedia has been more accurate and more reliable and way, way, WAAAAAY more comprehensive than Britannica for years now. I'm glad to see outdated relics of the 18th century replaced by better, faster, cheaper, and more accessible technology.

 

So no tears for Britannica from me, no sir.

[Cairo Jim]

I seem to be more bored on a computer than I am without one. In fact I occaisonally feel like throwing my computer out of my bedroom window.

[nikki.]

My plan to own all the books ever shall make me the darling of future historians. <3

[Alorael at Large]

Britannica's not shutting down, just switching to digital-only. It seems like an odd decision; now they're competing even more with Wikipedia. While the reviews on which is better, EB or Wikipedia, have varied, Wikipedia has two major advantages: being free and being far more detailed both in number of topics and in depths of explanation on major topics.

 

—Alorael, who expects that as Wikipedia continues to gain traction and legitimacy it will also continue to gain expert attention, picking up the edge EB has had as well as its many eyes, many hands advantage. (Although it's mixed; some academics are wholly eager to share their knowledge, while others view editing Wikipedia as effectively unpaid academic work and refuse.)

[Actaeon]

I had a prof who actually tried editing Wikipedia, but got it an edit war with someone who told him he clearly didn't understand Sponheimer's work on the subject. Professor Sponheimer sort of gave up after that.

[ex post slarto]

...And still others are shut out from contributing to Wikipedia because Wikipedia considers their input original work, which is not part of what Wikipedia does.

 

Wikipedia and EB are both encyclopedias. They are general reference works, not scholarly resources, even though both have moments where the quality of information is indistinguishable.

 

As such, I fail to see any circumstance in which it would be worthwhile to spend money on EB when something functionally identical (if potentially broader, as Alorael points out) is available for free. I really can't imagine any circumstance where paying for EB would make sense. What am I missing?

[Actaeon]

You're not missing anything. A print encyclopedia has many benefits for those without internet access. A pay online version of Britannica strikes me as just a last gasp before it goes under. If you want scholarly resources, there are peer reviewed journals. For everything else, there's Wikipedia.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Actaeon

For everything else, there's Wikipedia.

There's a gentleman from MasterCard here to see you, Actaeon. He seems quite eager to speak to you.

[Actaeon]

If parody violated trademark, the whole internet would be under arrest.

 

That said, I've never heard of this Actaeon chap.

[Kendroxide]

This discussion reminds me of this:

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

...And still others are shut out from contributing to Wikipedia because Wikipedia considers their input original work, which is not part of what Wikipedia does.

This just means that Wikipedia is not a place for reporting or publishing findings. Once your original work has been reported elsewhere, you can put it on Wikipedia!

—Alorael, who admits to not editing Wikipedia for a long time for similar reasons. He made a simple change to fix a typo that substantially altered meaning. It was reverted. He provided a scholarly reference. It was reverted again because the other editor could not access the reference. It was no longer worth fighting.

[ex post slarto]

Not always. If your original work unequivocally refutes a decades-old, incorrect assumption, good luck getting it on to Wikipedia. Wikipedia's standards use a "scholarly consensus" model which is often effective, but has weaknesses. Since it can't actually evaluate sources or their context AT ALL, it has a hard time dealing with changes in the state of human knowledge, and it is also vulnerable to all published misinformation.

 

This is still better than EB, though.

[Alorael at Large]

I'll argue that it's not Wikipedia's place to interpret overturns. Until the literature shows scholarly consensus, the overturn is still hypothetical. If there's no subsequent publication backing it up, it might merit a mention on Wikipedia as a controversy... but it might not. It's not always easy to weed out cranks and cutting-edge errors.

 

—Alorael, who wouldn't turn to Wikipedia for up to the minute scholarly information. That's not what encyclopedias are for. Wikipedia blurs boundaries sometimes, but for the latest in academia you need to turn to academia.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Not always. If your original work unequivocally refutes a decades-old, incorrect assumption, good luck getting it on to Wikipedia. Wikipedia's standards use a "scholarly consensus" model which is often effective, but has weaknesses. Since it can't actually evaluate sources or their context AT ALL, it has a hard time dealing with changes in the state of human knowledge, and it is also vulnerable to all published misinformation.

So you're arguing that something like CERN's recent "discovery" of particles moving faster than the speed of light is something that should be put on Wikipedia and claimed to be fact, and all articles on relativity should be modified to reflect the fact? Should a preliminary discovery from some physicist somewhere about the existence of magnetic monopoles justify immediately changing the page on Maxwell's equations to reflect this new "fact"? Should the publishing of a new theory about how the Earth resides in a four-point time-cube merit inclusion? What about something like the hyped-up discoveries about "life on Titan"? There's a definite reason that original research is not allowed: Because if there exists a "decades-old" assumption that has survived challenges for that long, there's probably something to it, and articles about it shouldn't go gallivanting around incorporating every new bit of unverified unpublished un-peer-reviewed (is that even a word?) research like they've suddenly been brought down from Mount Sinai.

[ex post slarto]

No sour grapes: I haven't produced any original research. Actually I was thinking about completely different sorts of situations, involving historical details that are fairly straightforward to look at but, because they are only details, are unlikely to generate enough extra scholarship to compete with a century of misassuming in books and journals. This is probably a much less relevant topic than big science issues, and clearly you both are right when it comes to those.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: ALorael

Digital archaeology is already happening, and the problems run deeper than just hardware failure. Software moves on too, and it can be hard to access data in formats no longer read by anything modern. Programs may require the retention of a compatible operating system can become lost when hardware that runs the OS is no longer common.

It should be mentioned that the same thing happens to print sources, although over a much larger time scale. Can you easily read a text written in ancient Egyptian?

[ex post slarto]

Deciphering dead languages is easier, I suspect, than deciphering lost file formats -- at least for languages that we have an adequate representation of, and which are not isolates.

[Actaeon]

Originally Posted By: Actaeon

If, by design or accident, the West found itself unplugged, could we stand on our own?

I haven't seen much response to this element, and it's potentially the crux of my curiosity.

I've been waiting for Wikipedia all my life. My preschool teacher started teaching me to read so I'd stop using my mother as a human encyclopedia, but it never quite did the job until the internet got its feet under it.

I could survive with the internet for entertainment purposes. I am not entirely sure, however, how practically productive I could be without being hooked into the matrix. It occurs to me that we are breeding a generation based on cooperative, networked intelligence, and I wonder how long any of us will retain the ability to stand on our own.

(Please note that I prefer to play devil's advocate. Since that isn't really an option when creating a topic, I often state things in somewhat excessive terms in order to elicit a response. I assure you I don't live in a bunker, although I do hoard books... just in case.)

[Harehunter]

Actaeon,

You are a person of my own heart.

 

As to your question, western society would not exist as we know it. But that does not mean that it would die out completely either. As long as there are hoarders of books, especially the entire collection of college chemistry books I still have, our technological base could still be rebuilt.

 

It would not be easy, and I suspect there would be a great reduction in human population, either due to scarcity of resources, or battles fought to gain/defend what resources are left.

Click to reveal.. (Sarcasm lurks)

This would be of benefit to the earth since there would be a smaller carbon footprint made by human activity.

 

The people who would most likely survive such a technological meltdown would be people of rural areas and remote regions, where they rely less on technology than people like me who make their living at it.

[Randomizer]

Industries that are dependent on the Internet for communication and distribution would suffer the most by its loss. For example Hulu that solely distributes shows over the Internet would be wiped out whereas Netflix would survive since it can go back to the mail for distribution although it would have trouble contacting customers until it makes catalogues to be mailed.

 

Other industries would suffer some dislocation and discomfort as they switched back to their old means. Mostly with communications since there would be no more computerized inventories updated through the Internet. Suddenly that old grumpy guy that always telling stories about how they used to do in the old days, last decade, will become valuable for a while.

[VCH]

On a related not: The journal Nature has a collection of articles (Scitables) on various subjects. Apparently they're trying to provide some sort of alternative to wikipedia. All the articles are written by experts in that particular field.

 

scitables

 

But I don't know why they bother really, I mean why not just tap wikipedia's shoulder and say "hey, we have a some experts here that would like to edit and or create a few articles". It's about time academia jumped on board with wikipedia and made it better.

 

Even the most complex or obscure things usually have at least a couple sentences on them on wiki; many times that's all I want any way. But it would be much, much better if scientists forced their grad or phd students to edit wiki articles, not that some don't already, but more should.

[keira]

Originally Posted By: VCH

why not just tap wikipedia's shoulder and say "hey, we have a some experts here that would like to edit and or create a few articles".

They kind of do that already. If you haven't noticed, Wikipedia has portals and WikiProjects, which are essentially teams of people who edit on a certain topic. These often are informally headed by an expert in the field. WMF has really added a lot of neat stuff to their wikis to facilitate these sort of mini-workgroup-community things.

[The Loquacious Lord Grimm]

The fallout from the death of the Internet would largely depend on how the Internet falls:

 

• If we're talking some sort of worldwide service collapse, worldwide networks could be up again in a matter of hours using dial-up. As Randomizer pointed out, all solely web-based commerce would suffer. Absolute worst-case scenario, the world's infrastructure reverts to something similar to that of the early 90s.
• If we're talking worldwide telecommunications collapse, radio communication is still possible, so while there might be panic and some time to adapt, it would still be possible to rebuild within a few months. Panic, at first, of course, but that will subside with a little military action. Some social change as people adapt (subject people to reruns, live programming, and, GASP, their NEIGHBORS!) and the likely collapse of most current web-based industries. This will hurt some businesses more than others in a somewhat unpredictable manner: the fate of local and regional businesses both will largely depend on their flexibility, and the flexibility of their suppliers. Facebook will survive by waiting it out, after drastic personnel, material, and budget cuts, of course. Spiderweb Software might be there at the end, if Jeff can help program the new telecommunications grid. But certain ISPs will die horrible, horrible well-deserved deaths, and no one will mourn as others rise up to take their place.
• Perhaps total electronics failure due to EMP weapons or act of God? In the former case, most governments are fully prepared; in the latter, well... either way, you start getting problems like public water shutting down, no means of long-distance communication, etc. Lack of Internet will be the least of anyone's worries as riots begin over local resources. Over time, western civilization should pass backwards over my last two points.
• Zombie apocalypse? Well, um... read the manual.

 

_________________________

The Silent Assassin is fine with the idea of a world with no print encyclopedias or Internet because you require neither to make a good pie.

He seemed very distressed when I pointed out that no Internet would sharply limit his free access to pie recipes.

[Cairo Jim]

I'm ony gonna agree to the point that we're only going to be in trouble since technology rins things like electricity thats used for refridgeration, and also for sanitation and water services. Things that we've come accustomed to over the last 100 or so years, but somehow lived without for a few thousand years. I imagine a lot of people would freak out, especially since a lot of people think that their food magically comes from their local supermarket.

[wgerard]

Well, it's really about time that they stop printing those thick layers of paper that eventually end just on someone's shelves. They practically had use some time ago but when people started shifting to electronic means, they did not really have that much use up their sleeves.

 

What will be better though is to port what they have on the more current trends like tablets. And they should shy away from the thought of actually making their own device accompanying it.