Displaying Encyclopedic Knowledge

Encyclopedia Britannica transformed itself last week into a free, Web-based product, signaling an end of an era for that most beloved of student plagiarism tools, the encyclopedia.

This move speaks volumes, approximately 32 of them, about the tremendous, seismic shift in information technology. It also explains why I was able to buy the CD-ROM of the Encyclopedia Britannica for $39 last month. The company was apparently trying to find out how many suckers would pay $39 for something they were about to give away absolutely free.

At least I didn’t spend $2,000 on the 32-volume print edition, which has been made virtually obsolete (as opposed to actually obsolete) by this Internet move. The Encyclopedia Britannica Web site contains the text of all 32 volumes as well as an array of other articles, links, and information tools. It also contains advertising, of course, since the Britannica.com Web site no longer charges a subscription fee. Even deep thinkers have to pay the bills somehow.

I view this entire move, as I view this Web site, with mixed feelings. The encyclopedia as an institution has played an important role in both our civilization and our own third-grade report-writing lives. Who among us has not dazzled the other kids during oral-report time with such amazing facts, as “Quito is the capital of Ecuador,” gleaned directly from the shiny white World Book Encyclopedia purchased from a door-to-door salesman?

Even today, my old World Book research keeps coming in handy. I like to dredge up facts from my old grade school report about the faraway state of Washington and then recite them to my enthralled children.

“What you’re looking at there is the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest concrete dam in the U.S., containing some 12 million cubic yards of concrete,” I will say, possibly even accurately.

One of the most severe blows to my academic life came in junior high, when a teacher informed us that we could no longer rely solely on encyclopedias; we had to dig up other sources and articles. How much sense does that make? The entire beauty of an encyclopedia is that it gathers all that information together so you don’t have to go scrambling through every book in the library.

The fact is, the encyclopedia is one of the great intellectual achievements of human history. To understand why, you have to think back to a distant time when it was not possible to log onto Yahoo and look up, for instance, an article about how eels reproduce. If you wanted to find out how eels reproduce, you had to go out in your ancient Greek village and find some guy who could tell you how eels reproduce, and nine times out of 10 that guy was wrong. So Aristotle decided to gather all of the knowledge in existence and put it in writing, thus becoming the father of encyclopedists.

Aristotle, unfortunately, thought that eels spontaneously generated from mud. But at least his heart was in the right place. (No, his heart was in the wrong place, too - he wrote that the heart floats around on top of the lungs.)

Still, he got numerous things right, and his example inspired a group of French authors in 1751 to create a massive 28-volume reference book which aimed to collect all of human knowledge onto one sturdy bookshelf. They named it an “Encyclopedia” which means roughly “well-rounded education.” And it certainly was; from this encyclopedia you could learn how to manufacture everything from a pin to a cannon, as well as debate the finest points of religion and philosophy.

The authors’ goal was noble in the extreme. If all of civilization and technology were somehow destroyed, the encyclopedia would contain all the information needed to rebuild it, assuming that the destruction had conveniently bypassed the den where the encyclopedia was kept.

Today, the encyclopedia is more likely used by schoolkids who need a list of the principle products of Uruguay. But it still serves as a concise collection of human knowledge. If I were abandoned on a desert island and allowed one possession, I can think of nothing better than a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, or at least an online connection to Britannica.com. Maybe a yacht would be a smart choice, too, but the point is, with a good encyclopedia, I might be able to slap together my own yacht.

So now I have three entire encyclopedias in my possession. I have the CD-ROM version of the World Book bundled into my computer. I have my new CD-ROM version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And I have the complete 22-volume set of the World Book that we bought from a door-to-door salesman when the kids were entering school.

Those CD-ROM encyclopedias are improvement in many ways, especially when it comes to searching for references. Also, they are so inexpensive that almost anyone can afford even the Cadillac of encyclopedias, the Encyclopedia Britannica. It doesn’t get much more inexpensive than $39. (Oh, I forgot. It does get much cheaper.) Still, when I looked up all of the fascinating facts about Aristotle and the French encyclopedists for this column, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. I didn’t want to waste time logging on, searching and then printing out the articles. I just grabbed the World Book print volumes and did it the old-fashioned way.

That’s probably what I’ll do when all civilization and technology is destroyed, too. I could stare all day long at a CD-ROM, but I still won’t know how to rebuild civilization.