Unlike most of the previous chapters, which have been about the making of an encyclopedia, this chapter is about the cultural meaning of an encyclopedia generally and the Encyclopedia of Computer Science in particular. Topics include, among others, the encyclopedia as an icon of the effort for a person to self-educate or for parents to help educate their children; as a representation of the current state of knowledge of the world around us; or as an indicator that a family or a nation has arrived at a certain station in the world.