Artifacts: Stories from the Emotional History of the Internet

·S2 E3

The Magic of Encarta (When Knowledge Fit on a Disc)

August 14
5 mins

Episode Description

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What did it feel like to discover an entire world inside a CD-ROM? A time before Google, Wikipedia, and instant answers, when there was a different way to explore knowledge.

CD-ROM encyclopedias like Microsoft Encarta turned the family computer into a doorway to somewhere much bigger. You could look up the Roman Empire, discover dinosaurs, explore a map, watch a video, and somehow end up learning about something you never intended to find.

In this episode of Artifacts, Danny Brown explores the likes of Encarta and the sense of wonder they created. Not simply because they contained an enormous amount of information, but because they encouraged us to wander through it.

Because finding an answer is one thing.

Discovering something is another.

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