Digital
1990 – 2010. The wire and the wave merge. Email, the web, broadband, mobile. By 2000 a billion people are online; by 2010, a billion of them are on smartphones. Every previous medium — text, audio, image, video, voice call — gets re-encoded as packets.
Part of Media
36 moments in this segment.
- — ARPANET — the first packet network. On 29 October 1969 the first message is sent over ARPANET between UCLA and Stanford — the system crashed after the letters "LO" of "LOGIN." This packet-switched network, funded by the U.S. defence department, is the direct ancestor of the internet.
- — Usenet & the BBS. Usenet newsgroups and dial-up bulletin boards were the first online communities and discussion media.
- — Napster & the file-sharing wars. Napster let anyone share music for free, breaking the record industry’s model and previewing the streaming age.
- — RSS & the feed. RSS let readers subscribe to a feed of updates — an ancestor of the algorithmic timeline.
- — The iPod — 1,000 songs in your pocket. Apple's iPod (2001) and the iTunes Store (2003) moved music from the CD to the hard drive and the download, pairing a slick device with a legal store and reshaping how a generation bought and carried music.
- — The personal computer (Altair 8800). The Altair 8800 kicked off the personal-computer revolution that put media-making on every desk. The subject dates from 1975; this photograph was taken in 2004.
- — Facebook Launches. Mark Zuckerberg launches "TheFacebook" from a Harvard dorm on 4 February 2004. Opening first to colleges and then to everyone in 2006, it turns the social network into the dominant online medium and makes the personal profile and the news feed central to daily life.
- — Amazon, eBay, Craigslist. Jeff Bezos in 2005, ten years after launching Amazon out of a Seattle garage as an online bookstore. Three sites founded within five months of each other in 1995 turn the web into a commercial substrate: Amazon launches as an online bookstore in July; eBay (then AuctionWeb) goes live on Labor Day weekend; Craigslist starts as a San Francisco email list in March and incorporates as a company in 1999. The subject dates from 1995; this photograph was taken in 2005.
- — YouTube Launches. Jawed Karim — co-founder of YouTube and uploader of the site's first video ("Me at the zoo") on April 23, 2005. Three former PayPal employees — Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim — register the YouTube.com domain on Valentine's Day 2005. The first video, Karim's "Me at the zoo," uploads April 23. Google buys the site for $1.65 billion in October 2006. Video distribution stops being broadcast and starts being long-tail.
- — YouTube Launches. Three former PayPal employees — Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim — register YouTube.com on Valentine's Day 2005; Karim's 19-second "Me at the zoo" (23 April 2005) is the first upload. Google buys the site for $1.65 billion in 2006, and video distribution shifts from broadcast to the long tail.
- — Blogs & the read-write web. Blogger and the blog gave anyone a printing press — the first wave of user-generated media. The subject dates from 1999; this photograph was taken in 2006.
- — Twitter. Jack Dorsey — co-founder of Twitter, who sent the first tweet ("just setting up my twttr") on March 21, 2006. Jack Dorsey sends the first tweet — "just setting up my twttr" — on March 21, 2006. The 140-character format is a constraint inherited from SMS; the @ reply and # hashtag conventions emerge organically from user behavior in 2007-2008. The site becomes the global breaking-news layer.
- — Twitter. launches in July 2006, with Jack Dorsey's first post — "just setting up my twttr." Its 140-character limit turns publishing into a public, real-time stream and makes the platform a nerve centre for breaking news, protest and celebrity for the next decade.
- — iPhone. Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at Macworld on January 9, 2007 with the line: "Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone." Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone at Macworld on January 9, 2007. "Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone." Multi-touch screen, no physical keyboard, full HTML web browser, OS X kernel. The App Store opens in July 2008. The smartphone era — and the always-connected media consumer — begins.
- — iPhone. Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone at Macworld on 9 January 2007, calling it "a widescreen iPod, a phone, and a breakthrough internet communicator." By putting a full browser, camera and app platform in one pocket device, it collapses every prior medium into a single glass rectangle.
- — Netflix Streams. Reed Hastings — Netflix co-founder. The company launched streaming alongside its DVD-by-mail business in January 2007 with 1,000 titles. Netflix — already a DVD-by-mail business since 1997 — launches its streaming service in January 2007 with 1,000 titles. By 2010 streaming surpasses DVD shipments. By 2013 Netflix produces its first original series, House of Cards. The cable-TV bundle starts to unravel.
- — Netflix Streams. Netflix launches streaming ("Watch Now") in January 2007, moving from mailing DVDs to delivering video over the internet. On-demand streaming detaches television from the broadcast schedule entirely and, with originals from 2013, upends the whole industry.
- — Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone (2007). The iPhone keynote launched the smartphone era — putting all media in one pocket device.
- — Android opens the smartphone. Google's Android (first phone, 2008) put a free, open smartphone platform against the iPhone. The two-OS world it created spread the pocket supercomputer to billions of people worldwide.
- — Google Founded. Larry Page, co-founder of Google — the PageRank-driven search engine that grew out of his Stanford PhD work in 1998. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Stanford PhD students, incorporate Google Inc. on September 4, 1998. Their PageRank algorithm — ranking pages by inbound link count weighted by source authority — is dramatically better than competitors. Within four years Google handles the majority of all global web searches. The subject dates from 1998; this photograph was taken in 2009.
- — Wikipedia Launches. Jimmy Wales in 2010, having co-launched Wikipedia in January 2001 as an open-edit companion to the expert-edited Nupedia. By 2007 it had surpassed Britannica in article count. On January 15, 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launch Wikipedia as a free, open-editing companion to the expert-edited Nupedia. By 2007 it surpasses Britannica in article count. By 2015 it has 35 million articles in 290 languages. The single largest collaborative work in human history. The subject dates from 2001; this photograph was taken in 2010.
- — Tim Berners-Lee Proposes the Web. In March 1989 a CERN software engineer named Tim Berners-Lee circulates a proposal titled "Information Management: A Proposal" to his manager Mike Sendall. The first web server, info.cern.ch, goes live on December 20, 1990. Sendall famously writes "Vague but exciting..." on the cover page. The subject dates from 1989; this photograph was taken in 2012.
- — Ray Tomlinson invents email. Tomlinson sent the first networked email and chose the "@" sign — soon the world’s default medium. The subject dates from 1971; this photograph was taken in 2013.
- — Mosaic — The First Mass Browser. NCSA Mosaic 1.0 ships on April 22, 1993. It is the first browser to render images inline with text, runs on Mac, Windows, and X11, and is free. By 1994 over a million people have downloaded it. Marc Andreessen leaves Illinois that year to co-found Netscape. The subject dates from 1993; this photograph was taken in 2013.
- — Mosaic — The First Mass Browser. NCSA Mosaic, released in 1993, is the first web browser to display images inline with text and run on ordinary PCs. It makes the web usable for non-experts and touches off the explosion of the 1990s; its team went on to build Netscape.
- — The podcast. Downloadable, subscribable audio shows revived long-form, on-demand spoken media. The subject dates from 2004; this photograph was taken in 2014.
- — Dial-up & "You’ve Got Mail". The screeching dial-up modem and AOL’s "You’ve Got Mail" were how millions first went online.
- — Napster and the file-sharing earthquake. Napster (1999) let millions swap MP3s peer-to-peer, detonating the recorded-music business and forcing every media industry to reckon with free, frictionless digital copying.
- — The Macintosh & the GUI. The Mac brought the graphical interface to the masses, making the computer a creative-media tool. The subject dates from 1984; this photograph was taken in 2016.
- — Amazon, eBay, Craigslist. 1995 is the year e-commerce arrives: Amazon sells its first book in July, eBay (as AuctionWeb) hosts its first auction in September, and Craigslist begins as a Bay-Area email list. Buying, selling and classifieds move online and never fully return.
- — Tim Berners-Lee Proposes the Web. In March 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist at CERN, circulates a memo proposing a hypertext "web" of linked documents. By late 1990 he has built the first web server, browser and page — inventing the World Wide Web that would become the defining medium of the age.
- — Facebook Launches. Mark Zuckerberg — Harvard sophomore when he launched TheFacebook from his dorm room in February 2004. By 2012 the site had a billion monthly active users. On February 4, 2004, Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg launches TheFacebook from his dorm room. The site expands to Yale and Stanford within weeks. By 2006 it opens to anyone with an email address. By 2012 it has a billion monthly active users — the first single platform to reach that scale. The subject dates from 2004; this photograph was taken in 2019.
- — Google Founded. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Stanford PhD students, incorporate Google on 4 September 1998 — Andy Bechtolsheim writes a $100,000 check before they even have a bank account. Their PageRank algorithm, ranking pages by weighted inbound links, is so much better than rivals that Google becomes the most-used search engine ever within a few years.
- — Skype & internet video calls. Skype made free global voice and video calls over the internet ordinary — videotelephony for everyone. The subject dates from 2003; this photograph was taken in 2020.
- — Wikipedia Launches. on 15 January 2001 as a free, anyone-can-edit encyclopedia. Its radical wiki model — crowdsourced, versioned, endlessly revised — grows into one of the most-visited sites on earth and redefines how a reference work is made and trusted.
- — Wi-Fi cuts the last cord. The 802.11b Wi-Fi standard (1999) freed internet access from the wall socket. Wireless networking made the laptop — and soon the smartphone — a device you could use anywhere, everywhere.
