I was reading my favorite online news website (Huffington Post) I found an article that struck me as no surprise, but still quite interesting, and I thought it had a lot to do with the subject matter of this class. The article’s headline read quite simply: “Oxford Dictionary Could Go Out of Print Thanks to Internet.” Now, I know the Internet is very popular now days, and a lot more people are relying on the Internet, but the Oxford Dictionary is the guide to our language, and a cornerstone of our society.
The article basically stated that because of the ease of use, and speed of looking things up on the Internet, prints of the Dictionary had gotten to an all time low, and it was becoming pointless to continue printing. They have an online collection of the Oxford Dictionary where people subscribe yearly, but still, no tangible text anymore? Without printed text I think it’s impossible to carry out the tradition of the English language. Without the printed text of the Oxford Dictionary, our language has to be passed down through, dare I say it…word of mouth, which we all know how accurate that can be.
Today’s world is a world where technology has taken over our basic everyday life to the point where most people have become dependent on technology as if we can’t live without it. I love technology don’t get me wrong, and up until now I was a supporter of “everything internet” but after reading this article I see that some things, such as the history of our language is important to have printed so that people find these things thousands of years from now when maybe there is no internet. If the Internet were to crash or somehow be shut down due to some “global threat” then a huge portion of our history would be lost, and researchers in the future would call our era the new dark ages perhaps.
Bibliography
Hui, Sylvia. "Oxford English Dictionary Could Go Out of Print Thanks to Internet."The Huffington Post. N.p., 29 Aug. 2010. Web. 30 Aug. 2010. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/30/oxford-english-dictionary_1_n_698588.html>
