The Candidate – Howard Dean: "Dick Cheney was holding a $2,000-a-plate fundraising lunch, so we asked Americans all over the country to join me the same day for a lunch in front of their computers. It sparked a huge response, and, amazingly, the online contributions from that day matched what Cheney made from his fundraiser. It showed that our campaign, and that of other Democrats, could remain competitive thanks to a growing base of people donating small amounts. A lot of people talked about how our campaign revolutionized the use of the Internet to raise money. But the Internet isn't magic, it's just a tool that can be used to do things differently. We treated it as a community, and we grew the community into something that has lasted long after the campaign ended. The Internet let us build that community in real time, on a massive scale, and that lunch helped us do that. The turkey sandwich wasn't bad either."
– Interview by Jeff Howe
Timeline: 2003 $750 million – Amount paid by Microsoft to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Netscape division of AOL.
Jan: Starbucks offers overpriced Wi-Fi to go with its overpriced coffee.
Feb: Hard disk storage drops below $1 per gigabyte. 1998 price: $43.
China tries to stymie news of killer SARS virus, but information leaks on the Internet and is passed around by email and SMS.
May: Busted! Valley investment banker Frank Quattrone is indicted for obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
File-sharing tool Kazaa becomes the most downloaded software in history.
Jun: Bay Area unemployment reaches 6.9 percent, nearly triple what it was three years ago.
Jul: Hoping to identify and sue some 900 alleged file-traders, the RIAA subpoenas Internet service providers.
Sep: Tennessee parents blame Grand Theft Auto for a shooting spree that killed their son, and go after Rockstar Games and Sony for $246 million.
Nov: Comdex is dead. Annual computer trade show is canceled just three years after attracting crowds of more than 200,000.
Dec: Mobile madness: With 520 million units sold worldwide, cell phones log record year.
Dean, presidential candidate, at his Burlington, Vermont, headquarters in July 2003. John Pettitt/cloudview.com
10 Years That Changed the World
| Intro
A Decade of Genius and Madness
