The world we live in is, in so many ways, 20 years old. Let’s go back and see how we got here.
In early 2004, the world was shaking it like a Polaroid picture, flocking to theaters to see what was going to happen with all those hobbits, and wondering if that Tom Brady guy was something special. Meanwhile, a few folks around the world were inventing the web as we know it now: a world-shaking social network was brewing in a Harvard dorm room. A Google employee was dreaming up the future of email in their spare time. The coolest cellphone of all time was just about to drop. The internet was still a niche activity, but that was about to change — and fast.
In so many ways, the digital world in which we now all live was created 20 years ago. Google went public and began to ascend to rule the web. Facebook, Gmail, Firefox, Flickr, and Digg all launched — the year Web 2.0 became the web. “Blog” and “the long tail” were on no one’s radar before 2004, and since then, they’ve been everywhere. The United States went through a contentious election, a bunch of sequels dominated the box office, and Apple launched a new product that looked very cool but was ultimately eclipsed by a better product a year later. Okay, some things never change.
Every year is a big year in tech, of course, but 2004 was an especially big one. And The Verge didn’t exist yet! So, this week, we’ll have stories on the best and most important gadgets and platforms that launched that year and pieces about the cultural events that still affect the way we live now. Basically, we’re going to blog like it’s 2004.
Our first few stories are up today, covering everything from the first robo-car race to the Motorola Razr to the mystery of all our missing 2004 photos. There’s also a special episode of The Vergecast all about the history and future of podcasts, an interview with Kevin Rose about Digg’s legacy, and a shockingly hard quiz asking one simple question: did it happen in 2004 or 2024?
We’ll be publishing more 2004 stories and videos all week, and we want to hear all your 2004 memories, too! Share your favorite pictures from that year, your favorite 20-year-old gadgets that wish still worked (or shockingly still do), and anything else you remember from that seminal year in our recent past. We’ll be doing the same. It’s going to be more fun than Shrek 2.