Agreed, Ted. The next new money making industry of the latter part of the 21st Century will be cleaning up the mess created be industry. Somebody will come up with a clever way to remove the flotsam and jetsam of chemicals and plastics in our oceans and some others will embark upon restoring our cultures to pre-AI and Big Tech ravages.
I understand that paper copies of dictionaries and reference books like encyclopedias are becoming fewer and fewer. They are all online these days.
I have subscribed to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary online version for many years. I have my own hard copy versions of the Webster’s Third International Dictionary as well as the 20 Volume Oxford English Dictionary. I use dictionaries daily. It is convenient to refer to the online version when I am out and about and want to check a word I do not know or one on which I am not quite certain.
The Webster’s online version was tremendously handy when I was away from home. This online version was an exact facsimile of the print version.
But on a day, which for me will live in infamy, back in 2013, I logged onto the online version and was horrified. Webster had drastically changed the online version and dumbed it down. I expressed deep dissatisfaction to Webster. They replied that it was a project to make the dictionary easier to use. I wrote them back and beseeched them to restore it to the way they had it before. I even offered to pay a higher subscription fee. The dictionary could have a tiered subscription. The top tier would be the unabridged version of the Webster’s Third International which is of invaluable service to writers and editors, researchers and scholars. The bottom tier, the one they had just launched, the one with the pictures of duckies and Tele-Tubbies would be an option for whoever wanted it. My lament of course, fell upon deaf ears.
Lesson: HOLD ONTO YOUR PAPER COPIES OF REFERENCE BOOKS. We will need to rely on them.
