I got into some super serious trouble as a kid in elementary school for turning on the computer while a substitute teacher was there, and messing around with the built in encyclopedia. Even before we had reliable internet, it was amazing to me that there was this just wealth of information on this tiny little CD-ROM.
I wonder if that sense of wonder is lost in the modern world? It's such a joy to stumble on some fascinating new relic and descend however briefly into the depths of its madness. I hope we can still find new ways to inspire that joy now that most of the world's information is available through a device in your pocket. Which... looking back on the last two decades is kindof an astonishing leap.
Getting in trouble for looking around on the computer is also a memory I have from certain elementary school teachers. They must have been so paranoid that a kid would wreck the machine by touching it wrong... such expensive things, so hard to fix by their standards.
There were "digital" encyclopedias before Wikipedia? Using VGA graphics and tiny little CD-ROMs (700MB each IIRC, no double-layer tricks or anything) even? That's amazing.
Anyway, VGA graphics just means you don't need to store megabyte sized images since you can't display them anyway. 700MB is quite a lot if you're just trying to replace a paper encyclopedia.
I wonder if that sense of wonder is lost in the modern world? It's such a joy to stumble on some fascinating new relic and descend however briefly into the depths of its madness. I hope we can still find new ways to inspire that joy now that most of the world's information is available through a device in your pocket. Which... looking back on the last two decades is kindof an astonishing leap.