Page 1 of Anyone still using ink and paper?

Not the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which after 244 years is ending its print edition.

After they shift their last few thousand sets, you`ll only be able to access the Encylopaedia as long as there is electricity running and a computer in your house, and most probably a broadband connection as well.

Is it just me, or does this feel like the End of the World?

===========================
Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

Site Reviewer at DVD Reviewer & MyReviewer

Carving out a niche with a pneumatic drill at Anime @ MyReviewer.com

Quote:
Jitendar Canth says...
Is it just me, or does this feel like the End of the World
Sign of the time until we are knocked back to the stone age

Quote:
kebabhead says...
Sign of the time until we are knocked back to the stone ageIt`s going to be a bitch finding a wall big enough to chisel 29 volumes on.

Snaps

Every Third Car

Quote:
kebabhead says...
Sign of the time until we are knocked back to the stone ageOr go live in Afghanistan. one & the same.

I remember as a kid, I often couldn`t find what I was looking for in our huge encyclopedia collection anyway.

As per the thread title, I still use a pen and the nearest envelope, if that is any consolation.


Editor
DVD REVIEWER
MYREVIEWER.COM

My Flickr Photostream

It`s a shame the EB won`t be available as a hard copy any more, but really it`s a sensible development.  The paper copy was prohibitively expensive and is of course set in stone (or rather printed on paper) - it can`t change with circumstances the same way an electronic edition can.  The old EB, although it`s more rigorous process was more reliable, was being outperformed by the likes of Wikipedia.  I still love ink and paper, but there`s room in my life and my affections for e-ink as well.  I don`t think one should be approved-of over the other.

I can`t help getting wound up by people who wilfully destroy information media - books, magazines, old vinyl LPs, videotapes etc. in favour of new media.  How do you know that book you`ve cut up to make greetings cards from, or that old album you melted over a cup to make a fashionable bowl, wasn`t the last surviving copy of that particular work?  I know it`s probably unlikely but you never know.  How many irreplaceable old movies and tv programmes have been destroyed by some penny-pinching idiot wanting to free up a few yards of shelving in a vault?  How many works of art or knowledge have been destroyed by some idiot with a blazing torch?

I keep finding myself buying (paper) notebooks and pens in my travels, although I mostly use my laptop or netbook or PDA for actually writing.  I`m trying to improve my appalling handwriting, although it`s an uphill struggle as the bad habits I was taught in school continue to give me writer`s cramp and the penmanship of your average orangutan.

This is the second time I`ve had to write this, and from memory as the original was lost irretrievably by the tag team of an unresponsive DVDReviewer server and Firefox`s sulk-screen when the server at the other end won`t talk to it.

Bloody technology.  I think I`d be better off with a quill.

J Mark Oates

I still use normal books and at the moment haven`t given into the peer pressure of a kindle type thingummybob.  I also still like to use the library to look things up rather than always google it.

I send all of my personal letters handwritten by post, but use the computer if its something official so no-one could claim they misunderstood my writing etc.  I usually think a handwritten note is more thoughtful than a computerised one, especially for thank you notes and things like that, I think computers make us lazy with things like that and help to lose basic manners.  I once got a thankyou note for a particularly expensive present I`d bought for someone, which the parents had literally printed off a dozen copies of "dear blank, thank you for my present, love from us" and then just written the names on.  IMO that is just the height of laziness and my mum would have killed me for sending a note like that!  I also received a handwritten note from a friend`s little boy who we`d bought some chocolate and pyjamas...I know which meant more to us.  On the day after boxing day, we used to have to sit and handwrite (even after computers came into the house) thank you letters to each person who had sent/given us something and they had to be personal, saying what you`d been given and why you liked it...if it was money, you had to tell them what you had/were planning to spend it on, and I still do to this day.

Computers have their time and place, and I love mine, and I love the ease of being able to mess about on facebook and keep in touch with people who I may well have lost touch with without it, and for people with problems which means writing are all but impossible, I think they are essential, but for a letter, its important to keep it personal and IMO computers don`t do that.

Which is why I`d like to improve my handwriting. My uncle Dennis (in his eighties) still does the most impeccable copperplate on letters and greetings cards. I know that`s more calligraphy than handwriting, but one`s got to affect t`other. :)

J Mark Oates

I asked for a notepad in work the other day.  Someone referred to me as "Captain Caveman"
Pete :-(


P.S. I remember having some encyclopoedias in the house, a long time ago(different house actually).  Fond memories, certainly added to my general level of literacy.

According to Ofsted, literacy has stalled in the UK.  That`s an appalling statement if you ask me. 

Like Pete, I remember having encyclopedias in the house - still have them to be honest.  In the 1960s my folks bought me a set of Arthur Mee`s Children`s Encyclopedia.  My maternal Grandad had bought a partial set of the 1910-ish edition for my Mum and my paternal grandparents had the 1930s edition.  When I had the three editions together it was weird how similar yet different they were.  Much was the same information, some bits had changed over the years but the most amazing thing was the way the illustrations had changed.  From lithographed paintings of kids in sailor smocks in 1910 to photos of 1950s kids in the version I`d been bought. 

J Mark Oates