After nearly 250 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is now
being printed exclusively online. In honor of its transition,
Bob Stein of the Institute for the Future of the Book has posted
a set of images from 1982 that imagine how an "Intelligent
Encyclopedia" might have been used by later generations.
Designed by Stein along with Atari's Alan Kay and Disney
animator Glenn Keane, the pictures show people using the
encyclopedia as a universal, portable guide — not all that
different from Wikipedia — that can be hooked up to televisions,
headphones, or Atari flight simulation units. Besides the
obvious fact that nobody carries around a dedicated device just
for encyclopedias, Stein says the biggest difference between
these images and the reality of current "electronic
encyclopedias" is the fact that we now use such devices to
communicate with others, not just to look up information. "We
completely missed the most important aspect of the network," he
says, "that it was going to connect people to other people." Ma