Artificial intelligence
Contemporary developments in artificial intelligence are transforming the way encyclopedic content is accessed on the internet. Today one could argue that people don't really care about encyclopedia articles. Readership is declining fast. People merely search for a concept or topic and consume the first page (maybe even only one or two of the top search results, maybe even without visiting the pages) to learn enough to move on to the next distraction. It is a short leap from search bars to chatbots. It is theorized that people are asking chatbots for answers that they used to receive from search bars.