Spring 1998
Restart Me Up
Freshly minted Windows 98 CDs are shrink-wrapped and shipped to the far reaches of the planet – just in the nick of time. Explorer is finally an OS element, despite the protestations of federal antitrust prosecutors. The browserish interface, and support for DVD hardware – plus the Universal Serial Bus – drives sales past the 50 million Win95 units sold. The kickoff song: another Rolling Stones golden oldie, "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
Spring 1998
Matinee Mayhem
A year after Tamagotchis rampaged through schools like Game Boys on juice, a remake of Godzilla sets Hollywood on fire. Once again, Japanese pop culture lands on the Main Street marquee – albeit 44 years after the original movie’s premiere. Toho, the Japanese distribution company that owns the rights to the film, has long protected Godzilla more vigilantly than Coca-Cola guards Coke™. But thanks to the prying ways of TriStar Pictures, moviegoers finally revisit the wonders of Monster Island.
Summer 1998
Writing to Disc
Computers equipped with DVD-RAM drives arrive on Costco shelves, but the début is less than auspicious. Costly capture boards are required for recording video, so the 5.2-Gbyte discs will be used for the less exciting task of backing up data – lots and lots of data. And Sony's commitment to an alternate RAM standard, DVD+RW, leaves consumers confused. No matter; the potential for new markets (read: porn) sparks retail demand for recordable DVD players.
Fall 1998
Aquatic Rocket
Boeing's Sea Launch, a 660-foot-long command ship that controls a 30,000-ton oil rig turned launchpad, hauls a rocket out to sea and fires off a satellite from the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The inquisitive might wonder, why all the fuss? It seems aquatic, near-equatorial launches best utilize Earth’s rotational forces – saving fuel, ensuring a longer life in orbit, and allowing companies to shoot ever-larger satellites into space.
Fall 1998
Internet Throwback
The completed Internet2 wires 116 universities to a new high-performance network. After starting with a paltry 34 sites back in 1996, the finished project harks back to the early academic days of the now commercialized Net. Nostalgia aside, Internet2 heralds cutting-edge advances – such as bandwidth-reservation services, support for IPv6, and an architecture built around gigaPOPs (gigabit-capacity points of presence) – that should eventually seep into commercial networks.
Spring 1999
Beer-Bottle Boon
Barroom brawlers find themselves in a quandary when Superex Polymer releases technology to manufacture airtight plastic bottles. Beer bottlers have had to rely on glass because plastic allows oxygen to leak in. Superex has found a way to make an air-resistant liquid-crystal polymer – the thick plastic used for electrical connectors – thin enough to be placed inside a bottle. The lightweight plastic spells cheaper beer (mmm … cheap beer) and wild new packaging.
Fall 1999
New Dune
Bantam Books's US$1 million investment in a trilogy of Dune prequels – coauthored by Frank Herbert's son, Brian, and SF author Kevin Anderson – comes out just in time for holiday shoppers. Fans compare the new offering to the original series, hoping that Junior has managed to capture the majesty of Senior’s vision instead of the campy cult status of the film version starring Sting. Either way, considering that the original Dune sold nearly 10 million copies, the publisher is the biggest winner.
2000
Intranet of Intranets
Nasdaq completes its Enterprise Wide Network II. The new net supports trading on the magnitude of 4 billion shares a day, scalable to 8 billion shares, and proves to be the world's largest and fastest intranet. Quite an impressive feat, unless you consider that on October 28, 1997, total market transactions numbered a record 1.37 billion, causing network operators to wonder how many trades a panic – er, correction – can engender.
2001
Mario’s Cap and Gown
Students at DigiPen, the videogame institution of higher education, take the long walk to the real world when the so-called Donkey Kong U. doles out the world's first bachelor of science degree in real-time interactive simulation. During the previous four years, pupils in the maiden class have studied mathematics, physics, programming, and animation. Now, equipped with little more than that coursework and the idealism endemic to recent grads, they leave the warm nest of college for the cold, hard realities of the gaming industry.
This article originally appeared in the March issue of Wired magazine.
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