It is a little book, more than fifty years old, and a source of information. In the not too distant past, when you needed a word explained or a similar word, you used such a book. In the not too distant future however, generations to come will "google" the word dictionary.
When we were growing up, my brother, Frank, and I used this little Webster Dictionary which proclaimed itself to be "self pronouncing." It contained eighty-five thousand words. I remember carrying that little book around in my pencil case because it was easy to lose otherwise. We found it among our mother's things after she died.
Today we carry dictionaries with us all the time in our phones and tablets. There is no excuse for improper word usage any more. Everything is so easy to verify. Phone and tablet cases have replaced pencil cases as holders. Some devices today are not much bigger than this little dictionary and have the potential to supply us with unlimited information compared to the limited content of the little book.
Imagine the words which are in common usage today that did not exist fifty years ago, words like emoticon, blog, transvestite, ginormous. Then consider the expansion of meaning for already common words like gay, high, wasted, hammered. Our little dictionary is long since obsolete.
What form will information take fifty years from now? By that time, our little dictionary will be a fossil.
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