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

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There was something magical about putting a CD into a computer and discovering

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that you'd just opened the door to an entire world.

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Not a film, not a game, not an album, but knowledge.

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Thousands of articles, photographs, maps, videos, sound clips,

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interactive features, all sitting there on one little disc.

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And you could explore almost anywhere.

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You could start by looking up the Roman Empire, and 20 minutes later find yourself

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reading about volcanoes, or dinosaurs, or the history of aviation,

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or something completely unrelated that you'd never even considered before.

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There was no plan. You were just curious.

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For generations, encyclopedias had been these enormous collections of knowledge.

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Heavy books, rows of them, usually somewhere in a library, a school,

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or a home where someone had spent a lot of money on something that took up an entire shelf.

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You'd open a volume, find a subject and read about it.

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And if something in that book caught your attention, you'd turn to another volume, then another.

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There was a physicality to learning. You could see how much knowledge there

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was simply by looking at the shelf.

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Then computers came along and changed the experience. Suddenly,

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an encyclopedia didn't have to occupy an entire bookcase. It could just fit on a CD.

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And for a kid sitting in front of the family computer, that was pretty cool.

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Because you weren't just reading an encyclopedia, you were exploring one.

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Into that world came Microsoft Encarta, which became one of those defining

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pieces of software for a generation of home computer users.

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You put the disc into the drive, and suddenly there was this enormous collection

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of information sitting inside your computer.

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But unlike a traditional encyclopedia, it didn't just sit there waiting for you to read it.

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You could click, search, jump from one subject to another, look at photographs,

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explore maps, watch videos, or listen to audio.

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You could begin with something you already knew about and then end up somewhere

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you'd never intended to go.

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And that was the magic. Encarta wasn't simply giving you answers.

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It was giving you places to wander.

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And I think that's why it felt a bit different from doing a Google search today.

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You weren't necessarily trying to solve a problem. You were exploring.

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There's a particular kind of curiosity that happens when you don't have a destination.

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You look up one thing that leads to another, that leads to something else.

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And before you know it, you've spent an hour learning about something you didn't even know existed.

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And we still do this, but today we call it falling down a rabbit hole.

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But today's technology surrounding that experience has changed.

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Within Encarta, the boundaries were already there.

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You had this enormous collection of knowledge sitting on a disc,

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but you couldn't simply ask it anything.

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You couldn't instantly search the entire internet. You explored what had been included.

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But that limitation was part of the experience. You knew there was a finite

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world inside that little disc.

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But you didn't necessarily know where that world ended.

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Then the internet changed what it meant to know something. If you wanted an

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answer, you'd search for it.

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And eventually, searching became so fast and so comprehensive that the idea

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of looking something up became almost invisible.

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Today, if I wonder how long it takes light to travel from the sun to the earth,

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I don't need an encyclopedia.

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I don't even need to think about where to find the answer. I can just ask.

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And that's a pretty cool thing. But there's a difference between finding an

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answer and discovering something.

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An answer ends a question. Discovery creates another one.

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And that's what I loved about encyclopedias and CD-ROMs. You could go in looking

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for one thing and leave knowing five other things you hadn't planned on learning.

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And I think that's why these old encyclopedia discs still feel pretty magical.

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Not because information was better. It wasn't. Not because the technology was

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especially sophisticated.

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By today's standards, it was incredibly limited.

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I think the reason it felt magical is because it made knowledge feel tangible.

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You could hold a disc, put it into the computer, hear the drive spin,

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and then there was a world waiting for you.

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The disc itself was an artifact of a very particular moment.

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A moment when the enormous promise of the internet was beginning to arrive in

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our homes. but before everything was connected to everything else.

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Because of that, knowledge still had edges. It could fit inside a box and that

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made the world feel both smaller but also much bigger.

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And that's what I really miss about those old encyclopedias.

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Not having all the answers but having time to wonder.

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To click on something because it looked interesting.

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To follow a trail simply because you wanted to know where it went.

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There was joy in not knowing what you'd find next.

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And maybe that's why the likes of Encarta still evoke such warm memories.

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Because it wasn't just a collection of facts, it was an invitation.

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Open me, look around, see what you find.

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I'm Danny Brown, and this is Artifacts.