The dopamine rush of finding some nugget of information, or some new corner of the mind palace under construction, was real. If you happened to be an insatiably curious kid, with a nerdy compulsion to collect facts and knowledge, this experience was nearly euphoric, like being let loose unattended in a candy shop where everything was free and no one would tell you you’d had enough. This instant access to all the world’s knowledge is still present, of course, omnipresent with the addition of smartphones. But in the pre–social media age, a huge amount of the activity of being online was hunting
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