Site of a Lifetime
When I was a kid, we had a hardbound set of World Book Encyclopedias that seemed, to me, to hold the answers to EVERYTHING. Or at least everything I’d need to know in third grade.
I loved the colorful graphics in the section on volcanos, and I laughed many times at the drawing of the extinct Dodo bird.
The entry on space travel, however, was useless. The books were published several years before I was born, and I was born about two weeks after man walked on the moon.
But that could be overlooked, because Encyclopedias cost a lot of money and we couldn’t afford to renew them every time history changed.
I doubt many third graders today have ever had the pleasure of picking up a heavy Encyclopedic tome, closing their eyes and opening it to a random page — only to learn about some far away place or animal previously unknown.
But I have to say, I’m pretty jealous of today’s grammar school set. Everything they need to know is merely a mouse click away.
And it’s about to get better.
Scientists this week announced a new effort to create an online encyclopedia of life. They’re pulling information from labs, libraries and museums around the world and aim to make a multimedia Web page for every known species on the planet.
Wow! Imagine having such unlimited space that everything ever known about anything could be accessible to anyone. For free.
Here’s a link to a demonstration of the project. If you’re not amazed, then you must still think man hasn’t been to the moon.
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