Lack of Print Can Cause A Narrowing of POVs The rate at which we process information in the 21 century’s world of social media is expedient. The spe

The rate at which we process information in the 21 century’s world of social media is expedient. The speed at which we desire this information is even greater. The want to know facts at your fingertips while underground or in the woods, lacking any 4G service is a modern day problem. This issue of how to access a site like Wikipedia with a couple of clicks to educate yourself on something like the history of Native Americans while being in a “dead” spot seems problematic, but there are ways around it. A simple and easy way would be to open up your “N” edition of Encyclopedia Britannica to find out about these people. This may still be possible and may still be possible in the near future but it seems that due to the social media’s acceleration of the spread of ideas, encyclopedias will not only become irrelevant with the use of the free, online encyclopedia Wikipedia but also outdated due to the new status of a topic.
In the New York Times column “Media Decoder” the article “After 244 Years, Encyclopedia Britannica Stops the Presses” by Julie Bosman

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?hp

she writes that this once standard for an aspiring middle class American family in the 1960s will now become a relic of the past. An outdated way of keeping history. A way that seems to be surpassed by online forms in availability, quantity, and even quality some may argue.
Bosman writes in her post, “It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”
A sad truth of this to those who value the physical aspect of books. Social media forums like Twitter and Facebook are creating their own history. Facebook now has a timeline that they are implementing into everyone’s profile, documenting the history of one’s account. In addition, the Twitter world is bound to start some kind of formal organization of hashtagged moments and trends. When Twitter does do so, they will be forming their own, short hand version of the history of pop culture and current events. With public blogging everyone can become the scorekeeper of current events, displaying multiple sides to every argument, providing a faction filled documentation of history.
Yes, this has its own merit. A new display of history. Maybe one day students will learn about the American History on their iTables, a table that will act as an oversized, educational iPad with all the textbook material in its memory. In these digital pages of the historic election in 2008 of President Obama there will not only be text, not only will there by a map of the electoral college, but also a chart of a streamlined-encyclopedia-style condensed overview of tweets and Facebook posts from the day, reflecting the public’s wide opinion. Learning will certainly involve new material and only a data base that is digital will be able to accommodate that.
But we must ask ourselves, in a time where social media is causing strong cultural diffusion, accelerated exchanging of knowledge, and making events out of events, what will happen when we need to know the facts in a time where internet service is not working. Can we possibly operate if a country at war with us finds a way to bring to a halt our internet services? At times like these it seems in order to access information we will have to reach into our slumping bookshelf and blow off our newest copy of the Britannica, the 2010 one. “The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project,” reads Bosman’s article. Will a new entry on global warming even be relevant to us at this hypothetical time? Probably not. Will we have to use this outdated information because this is all we have? Yes. Is it unfortunate that Encyclopedia Britannica is going to leave this world of print to join the rest? Hopefully we will not have to face a day that outdated print is all we have and internet sources are unaccessible. Touching on Google’s eery communistic ways, for capitalist gains, what will happen if they decide to limit information so that what is on the internet is only what they want you to see, and then buy? Again, another eery question, something that must be addressed when print is leaving the modern world, to an internet world where more points of view are supposedly represented, at least for now they seem to be.