Another one bites the dust

Once again we have evidence of how technology is changing the world. The New York Times is reporting that after 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print. That makes perfect sense to us.

It may well prove to be short-sighted, but digital publishing is the current trend. Publishers must look at the market and evaluate the cost/profit ratio and then they realize that it’s far cheaper to only make digital versions of publications. People no longer read newspapers, magazines and print books. ePubs are the way people want to access information today on their Phablets. As an example, we no longer do a print version of our ePub or our blog. You must be digital to have access to our content.

We’re not saying this is good, bad or indifferent. We’re just saying it’s the way things are today. The far bigger question is: what does this mean for the future? Will our grandchildren be able to read anything written today?

We can learn so much from the writings of ancient societies because they wrote on physical media. What will happen when there are no more Rosetta Stones? We’ve only been publishing our publications for about 20 years and I wonder how much of our history is already lost forever because of digital incompatibilities.