Yesterday, the Encyclopedia Britannica announced the shuttering of its print edition. Bob Wright mourns the loss but sees the logic:
Whereas books–novels, biographies–will live on for a long time in electronic form, I don't think the traditional encyclopedia will, even if for now Britannica will survive as a website. The whole idea of a top-down, orchestrated, unified compendium of knowledge makes less and less sense in a world where fact and analysis can arise in a bottom-up way and be organized by technological tools for your edification. (I'm not talking just about Wikipedia, which actually has its top-down elements, but about the whole internet.)
Deven Desai, with an eye towards the $1,395 price tag of the print edition, is happy Britannica has gone all-digital:
Will folks pay for the online version at $70 per year? I would guess not. Nonetheless [Britannica President Jorge] Cauz claims that people interested in expert opinions will turn to Britannica: “Google’s algorithm doesn’t know what’s fact or what’s fiction,” Cauz concedes. “So Wikipedia is often the No. 1 or No. 2 result on search. But I’d bet a lot of money that most people would rather use Britannica than Wikipedia.” So far the evidence seems to be to the contrary.
The Dish 