A Changing World

This week I took our family’s 22-volume set of 1993 World Book Encyclopedias and threw them away.  It was a surreal experience.  I bought the set used from our local public library in 1997 when they upgraded to the latest edition.  We’ve utilized them countless times over the years, although I have to admit:  not so much in recent years.

When I was growing up, my parents had World Book Encyclopedias on the shelf in our home—and whenever I wondered about almost anything and asked my parents, “How far is it to the moon?” or “What is soap made of?” (etc.), they’d say, “Look it up in the encyclopedia.”  This forced me to think and dig and learn.  But those days are over.  Not the days of looking up info, of course.  But the method of keeping large sets of bound volumes on hand to give us our answers.

Stepping back, then:  what do we gain and lose in this digital age as we trade in our encyclopedias for smartphones?  One could write books (or e-books!) on that question—in fact, many people have.  I’d say…

GAINS:  Quick, easy access to all kinds of information is the obvious plus.  You don’t have to run to the library—it’s all right here, right now, on your laptop or cellphone, wherever you are.  That means sav­ing time—time that can be invested in friendships and service.  We also gain by saving more trees and reducing bulky book collections.

LOSSES:  We lose some “quality control” that was once provided by reput­able publishers.  At least when you looked up “Commun­ism” or “Socrates” in the World Book, you knew that recognized experts were addressing your topic.  In the digital age it’s much harder to confirm that voices we tune in deserve to be taken seriously.  Also, the fact that we can access so much info goes to our heads, and we begin to think we should know everything.  And that’s exhausting.

In these shifting, changing times, let’s help each other fix our eyes not on shimmering screens but on Jesus (Heb 12:2), who’s the same yester­day, today and forever (Heb. 13:8).  And let’s encourage each other to rest in his secure love (John 10:29) and bank on God’s covenant faith­fulness (Lam 3:23; 1 Cor 1:9; 10:13).  The digital age has come, and someday it will go.  But the word of the Lord abides forever (Isa 40:8).