I subscribed to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
It was difficult. I didn’t much mind the $75 annual subscription price, but I spent early 2024 weeding subscriptions out of my wallet — about $1,000 worth annually. Last month, I discovered I could watch March Madness this year for just $32, instead of $72 — I was delighted for days.
“Finally,” I started thinking, “I’m getting a handle on the online spending game. I’m no longer a slave to their algorithmic skullduggery. I’m no longer a digital victim. I am now the master. I sliced YouTube TV and took $72 from them. I axed away nearly $1,000 annually in online subscriptions. I am the man.”
And then I was researching a man known as “Frederick Winslow Taylor,” the father of Scientific Management.
I went to Wikipedia and got information to supplement the facts from information in my home library. Wikipedia didn’t have quite enough, so I used the Google machine . . . and the Encylopedia Britannica entry appeared. I read it and was struck by the “crisper” facts.
For instance: (1) Wikipedia said Taylor conducted his time experiments in the 1880s. Britannica said he started in “1881.” (2) Wikipedia said he retired in the early 1900s to write about scientific management. Britannica said he retired at age 45.
