One word: Encarta.

Edit: Apparently you can still order an updated print edition of the World Book Encyclopedia for the low price of $1,259.00.

This refers to Google instead of Wikipedia, but I think this cartoon still applies. 🤣

We had this thing called a library. With books.

You could argue about who was right about some obscure fact all night long, or come up with your own creative theories.
Nowadays, in less than a minute, someone will look it up, killing the conversation.

You parents would just tell you something and you assumed it was true until you learned years later they where just winging it with bullshit.

In the long-long-ago, encyclopaedias were on paper, 28 volumes, and weighed 14kg. Quite comprehensive.

Then encyclopaedias were on a CD or two, around 100g.

Before Wikipedia, everything2 was a previous example of a massively-interlinked-website. You could search and maybe turn up some details.

Or prior to google being created, you would just do a search in metacrawler.com to usually turn up some OK answers.

Let me tell you about borrow return policy at libraries and the associated fines for late returns and how to find something using the dewey decimal classification system. Fun times!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-library-book-fine-paid

It’s surreal to me that there are people who don’t know what life before Wikipedia was like, lol.

Maybe it’s relevant to understand that the increased access to information hasn’t always translated to people being more informed. There are many people in my life who don’t actively look things up and who don’t have the curiosity or willingness to even check Wikipedia.

So it is still now a bit like what it was like pre-Wikipedia - people mostly relied on other people for knowledge, and knowledge was thus local and socially shared, not necessarily that factual or based in books. I still think this is the dominant way people live, but now social media is an extension of that “local” socially-mediated knowledge. TV and radio were sorta like social media before, it was the way things became “viral”.

I think now like then, looking something up on Wikipedia sets you apart from a lot of people, it makes you bookish, nerdy, or pedantic - as if the folk knowledge wasn’t good enough for you and you have become a traitor to your people by seeking something more from the stacks.

Just random webpages that you took at face value because there’s no way someone can publish misinformation on something as big and sophisticated as this internet thing.

I grew up in the 90s, so we had Encarta for most of the time I needed an encyclopedia.

It also wasn’t uncommon to have a (partial) set of encyclopedias at home. You could buy them, one or more volumes at a time, over the phone or occasionally from door-to-door salespeople. We also had an old set from the 60s that we inherited from my grandmother.

In the long, long ago times we had these things called libraries where books were checked out and accessible by using a card. Finding out factual information could take a bit of time depending on how obscure it was, but librarians were very helpful in finding things.

Otherwise stuff was mostly passed on by word of mouth and people tended to believe whoever said stuff with the most confidence. So like today’s social media, but slower and mostly in person.

search engines and before that software encyclopedias and before that physical encyclopedias.