Yeah you had the whole world at your fingertips but it still felt achievable to consume all of it. Nowadays you have the whole world at your fingertips but you dont know where to even start.
I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
11–20 of 202 posts
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#12Encarta was an amazing product that I fondly remember using in school. It was essentially wikipedia before there was wikipedia with the upside that it had curated and citable sources and generally a much higher quality of writing. In my eyes, over the years, wikipedia has caught up a lot in terms of quality of writing and wikimedia now has a lot of images and video. I wonder if there is a way to just download the who…
Part of the value of Encarta was in the human curation of what was interesting.
Wikipedia includes (by necessity) everything — but an encyclopedia would probably devote more space to (say) Nigerian history than to (say) the in-game statistics of all ~1,000 Pokémon.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#13Encarta might have been one of my first experiences doinking around with computers - I remember replacing the .WAV file for a cheetah with the sound of a car's engine and trying (but failing) to convince my brother it was the REAL sound of a cheetah. There is something about the data being bounded and explorable, both through the software and the file system that was... neat.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#14Convenience replaces nostalgia: Why miss Encarta when you have Wikipedia? I liked the Encarta experience: it was amazing to see videos, photos and everything in a nice UI back then, but today we have Wikipedia, Wikimedia, etc. It's a way superior experience and there's x100 content.
A one stop shop is kinda nice. The quality of the content is really good too. Wikipedia is probably good enough for the most part though.
I remember being so excited and enchanted by encarta and even non digital encyclopedias and books as a kid. The idea that I could crack open a volume and learn anything felt magical, in a non digitized world.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#15My family finally got a Windows PC in 1996, and Encarta was one of the first pieces of software we installed. I can't claim that I miss it much, but at the time it was definitely magical.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#16Mind Maze was a great excuse to play games at school!
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#17Encarta was an amazing product that I fondly remember using in school. It was essentially wikipedia before there was wikipedia with the upside that it had curated and citable sources and generally a much higher quality of writing. In my eyes, over the years, wikipedia has caught up a lot in terms of quality of writing and wikimedia now has a lot of images and video. I wonder if there is a way to just download the who…
Check out Kiwix: https://www.kiwix.org/
“Kiwix is an offline reader for online content like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, or TED Talks. It makes knowledge available to people with no or limited internet access. The software as well as the content is free to use for anyone.”
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#18"Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia" was like Encarta but it featured Sir Patrick Stewart, therefore it was a cooler experience.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#19Encarta was an amazing product that I fondly remember using in school. It was essentially wikipedia before there was wikipedia with the upside that it had curated and citable sources and generally a much higher quality of writing. In my eyes, over the years, wikipedia has caught up a lot in terms of quality of writing and wikimedia now has a lot of images and video. I wonder if there is a way to just download the who…
Part of the value of Encarta was in the human curation of what was interesting. Wikipedia includes (by necessity) everything — but an encyclopedia would probably devote more space to (say) Nigerian history than to (say) the in-game statistics of all ~1,000 Pokémon.
I suspect the sort of person who writes Wikipedia articles about Pokemon would not go and write articles about Nigerian history instead if Pokemon articles were not allowed, and vice versa. Wikipedia contributions are not really a zero sum game.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#20Encarta was an amazing product that I fondly remember using in school. It was essentially wikipedia before there was wikipedia with the upside that it had curated and citable sources and generally a much higher quality of writing. In my eyes, over the years, wikipedia has caught up a lot in terms of quality of writing and wikimedia now has a lot of images and video. I wonder if there is a way to just download the who…
Part of the value of Encarta was in the human curation of what was interesting. Wikipedia includes (by necessity) everything — but an encyclopedia would probably devote more space to (say) Nigerian history than to (say) the in-game statistics of all ~1,000 Pokémon.
Some people call this phenomenon "wikigroaning": "the art of highlighting Wikipedia's bias toward things that don't matter".