5 ms·

In Encarta’s case, cheap, high density storage mediums were passed by something that already existed and had existed for quite some time before, the internet. I

by AJ007 7y ago

In Encarta’s case, cheap, high density storage mediums were passed by something that already existed and had existed for quite some time before, the internet. In other regards maybe the storage medium was just a side detail and the important part was what could be done with that data thanks to faster computers. There might be some parallels here today with machine learning. Neal Stephenson's quote about the future already being here but not being evenly distributed seems appropriate.

dgritsko 7y ago
I think the "not evenly distributed" quote is from William Gibson.
dredmorbius 7y ago
As Encarta was being developed (~1991 per another comment here), the Internet was still highly nascent. I was at uni during this period, and a major bragging right of the campus I was on was dedicated high-speed network connections to other schools within the university system ... over 56K leased lines. Those were shared amongst the 100k+ student, faculty, and staff population (though a very small fraction of those used it). The takeaways I get of this: 1. Exponentially-developing technology can pass you by quickly. The Internet went from exceedingly obscure to global in the ten years of the 1990s. Broadband wasn't ubiquitous by 1999, but it was increasingly available. 2. Standards matter. Even constructing a workstation that could handle reading Encarta was a challenge, and the tools to compose, render, and especially, present multimedia content (images, audio, video) were not common. Microsoft went the closed-source proprietary route, dooming them to the dustbin (though pieces were salvaged). 3. Standards are hard. Re-read above. 4. There are thresholds of utility that make or break things. I've been around infotech long enough (somewhat pre-dating the periods discussed here) that I've seen numerous technologies go from extreme cutting edge to widely adopted to passe. (And quite a few proposed but never gaining critical mass.) The reasons why any given tech fails right now are numerous. Luck plays a major role. The present has exceptionally cheap bulk storage (my tablet has a 128GB removable microSD card for about $50), high-speed, ubiquitous, and wireless networking, and tools for sharding and distributing updated documents and file formats (git, rysnc, etc.). This makes distributed updatable large-scale works possible. The technology of written works has undergone several seismic shifts, from clay tablet to papayrus roll to codex to moveable type. Less well-known (but only slightly) are the updatable formats: loose-leaf, three-ring, and replaceable bindings, all introduced in the late 19th century, which enabled updatable works. These were true "periodicals", where sections could be updated with amendments or replacements as information changed. The database, digital file, early version control, Wiki, and distributed version control are, IMO, all legitimately novel forms of written works, which should be recognised as such. They have and will continue to change how content is created and used, and affects and interacts with society.
- JimOk 7y ago
  I think the phase that usurped Ecarta's position had more to do with good quality web search and to a lesser extent the crowdsourcing model of Wikipedia (run by a foundation rather than a for profit mega corporation) than to content or data standards.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Search within an encyclopedia (e.g., Wikipedia) doesn't rely on Web search generally (e.g., DDG). I can see your point that content outside a curated context replaces an encyclopedia to an extent, and up until about 5-10 years ago, as clickbait and black-hat SEO finally won out, much noncommercial Web content was at least informative, if of generally lower quality than traditional printed sources. Convenience has a huge edge over quality, though. These days, it's Wikipedia's curated content, especially for complex breaking news stories, that is my first go-to. After Idleword's (Maciej Cezglowski's) piece on Hong Kong hit HN last week, I finally took a look at Wikipedia's article on the protests there. A full 73 page long article with references on a protest movement only a couple of months old. That's staggering, and exceeds all but the very best news sources. (Another case I'd noted was the Oroville Dam case, where Brad Plumer's article for Vox was the only trad med piece I could find even remotely approaching Wikipedia's article. The first instance of this I recall was the 2004 Boxing Day quake/tsunami in Indonesia / Indian Ocean.) Wikipedia, on the other hand, greatly enhances Web search, though it also benefits generally from the high profile resulting from that. Wikipedia's crowdsourcing, the reliance on underlying technologies (Wiki, HTML, mediawiki markup), and on a huge set of organisational systems, standards, practices, and solutions Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation have arrived at, were transformational. Though those too strongly resemble the largely equivalent or analogous practices of earlier encyclopaedic efforts dating back to at least Diderot, as well as other reference works (OED, see Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman). (Note: updated to add 2nd 'graph beginning "I can see your point...")
  - JimOk 7y ago
    The arrival of good internet search along with the ever increasing pool of web content doomed a curated content approach such as was used by Encarta (which could never aspire to be as broad or deep as the web). I can tell you, based on watching sales figures and talking to many customers, that web search was a much bigger factor for the business than was Wikipedia. In any case it would have been much trickier to get the level of crowd input given to Wikipedia by a for profit enterprise. Regardless of tools or formats used.
santoshalper 7y ago
That's a William Gibson quote.

by AJ007 7y ago

dgritsko 7y ago

I think the "not evenly distributed" quote is from William Gibson.

dredmorbius 7y ago

As Encarta was being developed (~1991 per another comment here), the Internet was still highly nascent. I was at uni during this period, and a major bragging right of the campus I was on was dedicated high-speed network connections to other schools within the university system ... over 56K leased lines. Those were shared amongst the 100k+ student, faculty, and staff population (though a very small fraction of those used it). The takeaways I get of this: 1. Exponentially-developing technology can pass you by quickly. The Internet went from exceedingly obscure to global in the ten years of the 1990s. Broadband wasn't ubiquitous by 1999, but it was increasingly available. 2. Standards matter. Even constructing a workstation that could handle reading Encarta was a challenge, and the tools to compose, render, and especially, present multimedia content (images, audio, video) were not common. Microsoft went the closed-source proprietary route, dooming them to the dustbin (though pieces were salvaged). 3. Standards are hard. Re-read above. 4. There are thresholds of utility that make or break things. I've been around infotech long enough (somewhat pre-dating the periods discussed here) that I've seen numerous technologies go from extreme cutting edge to widely adopted to passe. (And quite a few proposed but never gaining critical mass.) The reasons why any given tech fails right now are numerous. Luck plays a major role. The present has exceptionally cheap bulk storage (my tablet has a 128GB removable microSD card for about $50), high-speed, ubiquitous, and wireless networking, and tools for sharding and distributing updated documents and file formats (git, rysnc, etc.). This makes distributed updatable large-scale works possible. The technology of written works has undergone several seismic shifts, from clay tablet to papayrus roll to codex to moveable type. Less well-known (but only slightly) are the updatable formats: loose-leaf, three-ring, and replaceable bindings, all introduced in the late 19th century, which enabled updatable works. These were true "periodicals", where sections could be updated with amendments or replacements as information changed. The database, digital file, early version control, Wiki, and distributed version control are, IMO, all legitimately novel forms of written works, which should be recognised as such. They have and will continue to change how content is created and used, and affects and interacts with society.

JimOk 7y ago
I think the phase that usurped Ecarta's position had more to do with good quality web search and to a lesser extent the crowdsourcing model of Wikipedia (run by a foundation rather than a for profit mega corporation) than to content or data standards.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Search within an encyclopedia (e.g., Wikipedia) doesn't rely on Web search generally (e.g., DDG). I can see your point that content outside a curated context replaces an encyclopedia to an extent, and up until about 5-10 years ago, as clickbait and black-hat SEO finally won out, much noncommercial Web content was at least informative, if of generally lower quality than traditional printed sources. Convenience has a huge edge over quality, though. These days, it's Wikipedia's curated content, especially for complex breaking news stories, that is my first go-to. After Idleword's (Maciej Cezglowski's) piece on Hong Kong hit HN last week, I finally took a look at Wikipedia's article on the protests there. A full 73 page long article with references on a protest movement only a couple of months old. That's staggering, and exceeds all but the very best news sources. (Another case I'd noted was the Oroville Dam case, where Brad Plumer's article for Vox was the only trad med piece I could find even remotely approaching Wikipedia's article. The first instance of this I recall was the 2004 Boxing Day quake/tsunami in Indonesia / Indian Ocean.) Wikipedia, on the other hand, greatly enhances Web search, though it also benefits generally from the high profile resulting from that. Wikipedia's crowdsourcing, the reliance on underlying technologies (Wiki, HTML, mediawiki markup), and on a huge set of organisational systems, standards, practices, and solutions Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation have arrived at, were transformational. Though those too strongly resemble the largely equivalent or analogous practices of earlier encyclopaedic efforts dating back to at least Diderot, as well as other reference works (OED, see Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman). (Note: updated to add 2nd 'graph beginning "I can see your point...")
- JimOk 7y ago
  The arrival of good internet search along with the ever increasing pool of web content doomed a curated content approach such as was used by Encarta (which could never aspire to be as broad or deep as the web). I can tell you, based on watching sales figures and talking to many customers, that web search was a much bigger factor for the business than was Wikipedia. In any case it would have been much trickier to get the level of crowd input given to Wikipedia by a for profit enterprise. Regardless of tools or formats used.

santoshalper 7y ago

That's a William Gibson quote.