2010 encyclopaedia britannica final print

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Sales volume surged from just 1,500 nonfungible felines on launch day to more than 52,000 on 10 December 2017, according to, with many CryptoKitties selling for valuations in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. “That was an incredibly bewildering time.” “As soon as it launched, it pretty much immediately went viral,” saysīryce Bladon, a founding member of the team that created CryptoKitties. Launched on 28 November 2017 after a five-day closed beta,ĬryptoKitties skyrocketed in popularity on an alluring tagline: But it can be a weakness when an NFT game goes viral. The resulting reduction in demand protects the network from being overloaded and transaction times from becoming excessively long. High demand means high fees, encouraging users to think twice before making a transaction. This creates an obstacle to overworking the blockchain’s network. There’s one final piece of the blockchain puzzle you need to understand: “gas.” Some blockchains, including Ethereum, charge a fee for the computational work the network must do to verify a transaction.

#2010 encyclopaedia britannica final print code#

An NFT, by contrast, has unique code that applies to no other NFT. A fungible good is, by definition, one that can be replaced by an identical item-one bitcoin is as good as any other bitcoin. Just like individual Ethereum tokens and bitcoins, the cat’s code also ensures that the token representing each cat is unique, which is where the nonfungible token, or NFT, comes in. Players buy, collect, sell, and even breed new felines. Each chunk of the game’s code (which it refers to as a “gene”) describes the attributes of a digital cat. Newer alternatives, such asĮthereum, gained popularity because they allow for complex “smart contracts”-executable code stored in the blockchain.ĬryptoKitties, if you were to say ‘blockchain,’ everyone would have assumed you’re talking about cryptocurrency”-Bryce BladonĬryptoKitties was among the first projects to harness smart contracts by attaching code to data constructs called tokens, on the Ethereum blockchain. Bitcoin, though popular as an asset and useful for money-like transactions, has limited support for doing anything else. The complexity comes in how blockchains keep the ledger stable and secure without a central authority the details of how that’s done vary among blockchains. At its core, a blockchain is a simple ledger of transactions placed one after another-not unlike a very long Excel spreadsheet. Blockchain technologyĪrguably began with a 1982 paper by the computer scientist David Chaum, but it reached mainstream attention with the success of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency created by the anonymous person or persons known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Has the world simply moved on to newer blockchain projects? Or is this the fate that awaits all NFTs?īlockchains, smart contracts, and cat genesĬryptoKitties, you have to start at the beginning. “The Merge,” a piece of digital art that sold for the equivalent of $92 million, left Dragon behind as the NFT market surged to record sales, totaling roughly $18 billion in 2021.

#2010 encyclopaedia britannica final print plus#

That feeling hasn't happened yet with any of the digital devices I have ever owned (although I must admit I still have fond feelings when thinking of my old Mac Plus and Motorola V300, which are stashed away in a closet).ĭragon was never resold-a strange fate for one of the most historically relevant NFTs ever. While I don't use it much anymore, I still get an inexplicable feeling of reassurance whenever I glance over at my bookcase and see it there. I bought my copy of the 15th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica as a young engineer in 1980 for about $750 or so.

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Starting Tuesday, the Post says, 'the company plans to mark the end of the print version by making the contents of its web site available free for one week.' Over 100 million people use the online version of the Britannica, according to a company spokesperson. The first CD-ROM edition was published in 1989 and a version went online in 1994.' The company started exploring digital publishing in the 1970s. That number fell to 40,000 just six years later in 1996. 'The top year for the printed encyclopedia was 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold. The 2010 set (which costs US$ 1 395) will be the final print edition before the Britannica goes completely digital.Īccording to a story at the Washington Post, Now, after 244 years, 'the 32-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica print set will be discontinued,' according to an announcement on Britannica's web site. So wrote William Smellie in the preface of the first edition (1768-1771) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Wherever this intention does not plainly appear, neither the books nor their authors have the smallest claim to the approbation of mankind.' 'Utility ought to be the principal intention of every publication.