Encarta of the good ol’ days
Monday
Apr 11, 2005
It was the year the world’s dominant OS maker
started numbering software versions after the year of release. The family had
just acquired its second ever desktop PC, and the first Pentium-based
one. I was still in high school. 1995: the year that was.
The retail shop generously included a copy of MS Encarta
in our package (whether it was genuine or not has escaped my memory),
and we were delighted to have such an invaluable source of knowledge
all in one place. We researched project and homework material on
Encarta, and we even quoted some entries and used some images (with the
appropriate citations of course). I even remember my sister
having prepared a research paper using Encarta as the sole reference!
Yes, we had internet access, but it was expensive, and we had no
definitive guide or index to whatever knowledge was avilable online.
Things changed. The dominant OS maker started using weird
acronyms and codenames to denote OS versions (XP, ME, Longhorn).
Now internet prepaid cards abound, at very cheap rates (Pacific Internet sells prepaid access for PhP 1.00 per hour; Blast
offers unlimited off-peak access), and DSL is catching on to be the
internet connection of choice for the more affluent users. Now
search engines like Google have grown to become popular research portals.
The CD-ROM based encyclopedia ushered in the demise of the volumes and
volumes of the book versions. Has the internet age done
likewise for the CD-ROM versions? Has Google taken center-stage in becoming the ultimate source of knowledge online?
Perhaps not … not yet, at least. Encyclopediae are still very
good sources of knowledge. While virtually any research can be
done over the ‘net, one cannot deny that there are still advantages the
more structured set of information found in encyclopediae has to offer.
And encyclopediae are now published online.
But the collaborative nature of the online world has ushered in another strong contender: the WikiPedia. As a “wiki” or a developed knowledge base, WikiPedia is a collaborative piece of work constantly updated and developed by its users, or virtually anyone.
Encarta has opened up to this concept. In its new blog, Encarta Space, the developers have announced that Encarta will open access to its articles for refinement by the public.
Of course, opening content for the public to revise may sometimes
result in differing views, given the subjective nature of some pieces
of information. But the idea of a collaborative online workspace
is surely cool. And it’s suerly not a new idea.
(via Micro Persuasion)
J. Angelo Racoma is a technology journalist and blogger. See more of his blog posts here at racoma.com.ph, commentaries at racoma.net, and Twitter feed at @jangelo.
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