Death of the Dinosaurs

            When I say dinosaurs, your mind probably wanders to Jurassic World and all of the splendid creatures it held.  For other people, dinosaurs could mean older generations that constantly call into the IT hotlines or have to call up their grandchildren to figure out how to even turn on a printer.  Then there are people that think of outdated technologies and mentalities. 

            Almost these archaic mentalities is the dictionary.  These ten pound giants that would shake desks at a mere three inch drop.  Don’t forget their cousin: the Encyclopedia.  In most cases this involved an entire shelf of giant books.  Sometimes they’d have relevant information, sometimes they’d refer to Russia as the Soviet Union.  My favorite is when they would refer to a certain region in Asia as Korea.  Just one. 

Growing up, my teachers would always tell me to look up how to spell “synonym”
in the dictionary or to look into the swarm of encyclopedias in hopes of finding the correct French Revolution.  Now whenever I’m curious about something I have an easily accessible best friend: Google!  In fact, the saying “I don’t know, google it” has revolutionized the English language to the degree of adding the term “google” as a verb.  Google (the website) isn’t even twenty years old and it’s already in the dictionary (has been for a long time, too)! 

This rapid transition took less than twenty years!  Dictionaries that have been a vital fountain of knowledge for the last few centuries were outed within twenty years!  Basically since the beginning of household internet.  This huge meteor decimated the reigning titans.  Volunteer organizations (like Rotary) that previously spent thousands of dollars supplying dictionaries to elementary schools are even moving on.  Even an organization like Rotary that features older patrons has recognized the death of an era! 

Even though we are currently living the in the Sixth Mass Extinction, it shocks me that we can add classroom dictionaries to the long list.