There will be no new print editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica—Wikipedia will have to carry us from here on—and one of the losses that came with the news is environmental. I don’t mean trees and paper, but those enticing nearby entries on the page of a dictionary or encyclopedia that lay close to the word or topic you were looking up, and delightfully drew you away from your term-paper or mid-essay task: “Shakers” just above “Shakespeare,” “Ship” across from “Shiloh.” Your “Lepanto, Battle of” lay naked in the sheets between “Leonardo” and “Lepidoptera,” and there went a whole morning. Digital information is a lot quicker but less broadening. Less fun.
Roger Angell. People say this kind of thing all the time. I used to say it myself, until I happened to notice that I could go online to google one phrase and end up clicking links for the next six hours.