Encyclopedia Britannica

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do you guys (Americans) remember traveling encyclopedia salesmen? this was back in the 1980/90's where these guys knock on your door selling Encyclopedia Britanica [sic]. my parents bought New World because it was cheaper (still hundreds). then when things were on CD-ROM, they knocked on our doors again peddling the same thing on disc. we didn't buy it the second time...
 
I don't remember that, I think we were too poor to afford those. I remember going to a friend's house who had it, or to the library if I ever needed to use it. Also, Winona Ryder's character in Stranger Things (set in the 80s and has lots of great 80s references) sells those encyclopedias, but not door-to-door, just over the phone.
 
do you guys (Americans) remember traveling encyclopedia salesmen? this was back in the 1980/90's where these guys knock on your door selling Encyclopedia Britanica [sic]. my parents bought New World because it was cheaper (still hundreds). then when things were on CD-ROM, they knocked on our doors again peddling the same thing on disc. we didn't buy it the second time...
My ex’s dad tried that racket with some off-brand in Aus maybe sixty years ago. I think there was still a basementful of the things when they fled the country.

Wikipedia has broken the entire business model. However the promise of the Net as the global university has died as most academic information is locked behind steep paywalls, and the free info is badly shot through with disinfo and just plain woo. :(
 
do you guys (Americans) remember traveling encyclopedia salesmen? this was back in the 1980/90's where these guys knock on your door selling Encyclopedia Britanica [sic]. my parents bought New World because it was cheaper (still hundreds). then when things were on CD-ROM, they knocked on our doors again peddling the same thing on disc. we didn't buy it the second time...
Oh yeah. People were a lot more comfy randomly knocking on doors back then. Encyclopedias, books on the unexplained, knife sets, cookies, magazine subscriptions, cults. Shed a tear for the creeping paranoia that's precipitated insular unneighborly neighborhoods, but no tears for the loss of the traveling spammermen.
 
no, but i used the E.B. software version as a kid to do homework a few times. wikipedia's much better.
 
Wikipedia is one of the greatest benefits of the Internet. You can look up just about anything and get at least a basic idea of what it is and where to look for more information.

Not all articles are of high quality, but most are pretty damn good, at least as a starting point, and typically far more detailed than anything that ever was in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And Wikipedia doesn't go out of date. For current events, the relevant page usually gets updated within minutes.
 
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