Almost 250 years after it first appeared, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is ceasing its print edition.
In this article, Andrew Gyory discusses the end of the encyclopedia as we know it. Encyclopaedia Britannica is evolving into an entirely digital database and discontinuing its heavy, space consuming printed volumes. He worries that the Britannica, with its traditional business model of organizing information will eventually morph into a more disorderly mass of data like Wikipedia, an infinite storage space with endless links to articles in an unconventional order. Without the edited intellectual unity that makes an encyclopedia a source of knowledge, he worries that knowledge itself could potentially "melt" away, becoming isolated scattered facts.
He depicts Wikipedia as growing like an "unplanned city" with its articles connected by hyperlinks and keywords where as an established encyclopedia, like Britannica, is laid out like a "planned community," with the authors referencing each others articles to make a cohesive volume of information.
Concepts and configurations for editorial:
The buildings represent traditional knowledge as it melts away.
Knowledge melts away and becomes isolated bits of data and facts, which Gyory argues is not knowledge at all.
The bits of data and facts are spread around the world through vessels and search engines like Wikipedia.
After reading the article, the author is really making a point about how the data age and digital reference guides are leading to a more disconnected approach to acquiring information. On the surface that may be true, but I think that free information sources like Wikipedia, although disorderly in its beginning stages, will ultimately bring us together on a grander global scale, allowing a means for wide channels of information and communication that will eventually make us smarter.
Thus, my sketches evolved into traditional knowledge melting away into hyperlinks that are spread across a globe of infomation.
