Buzz
We’re already halfway through the year, and it’s shaping up to be an incredible one. But let’s pause and reflect on simpler times. 'Friends' ruled the TV screens, Britney Spears was a fresh pop phenomenon, and 'The Matrix' was the ultimate, mind-bending cinematic masterpiece that left everything else in the dust.
Back then, technology was beginning to accelerate, and the Internet was starting to prove it wasn’t just a passing fad. How we wish we could turn back time, even for a brief moment, to relive the innocent optimism in our eyes as we gazed into a future brimming with boundless technological possibilities.
In 1999, the state of technology felt remarkably advanced. It seemed like we had reached the peak, and it was hard to imagine a future with much more progress. We believed we were already living in an age of high-tech marvels, and any major breakthroughs would be decades away.
Fast forward ten years, and the world is unrecognizably different in ways we never thought possible, even in our wildest fantasies. A wave of groundbreaking technologies has emerged in the last decade—technologies that even the most imaginative science fiction writers couldn’t have predicted. From the way we play to the way we think, everything has been disrupted by these innovations. Here’s a glimpse into some of them.
10. Portable Gaming Devices
As the millennium approached, portable gaming was on the rise. Most gamers had a Gameboy, and the fortunate few flaunted the Gameboy Color. There was always that one kid, the rich one, sitting at Pizza Hut with the Sega Gamegear—the talk of the town—and Pokémon was taking the globe by storm.
At night, you'd drift off to sleep with dreams of the Atari Lynx dancing in your head, wishing you could one day own one. Ten years later, you're relieved that your parents never gave in to buying one.
Soon after that chapter of your life, the portable gaming scene underwent a major transformation. With Nintendo in the lead, they became more daring, and it paid off. The Gameboy Advance brought quality graphics and sound just above what was possible on the Super Nintendo, and not long after, the Nintendo DS pushed even further, delivering post-N64-quality games with a touchscreen and unlocking a whole new world of gaming potential.
What’s even more impressive is that, for once, Nintendo found itself with real competition in the portable gaming world. Sony took their powerhouse, the Playstation 2, and condensed it into a sleek, portable console that commanded respect. The high-quality graphics and sound that Sony was famous for could now be experienced on the go, displayed beautifully on a 4.3″ screen.
If only you had known, ten years ago in your room, that the gaming world was about to undergo a massive shift, and that one day, you’d completely forget about the Atari Lynx… until you came across it in a Mytour article.
9. Hybrid Cars
Electric cars have been a hot topic among consumers for decades, with the conspiracy theories and facts surrounding their conspicuous absence in the auto industry sparking numerous questions and frustrations. Electric vehicles hold the promise of significantly reducing man-made pollution, making roads quieter and safer, and eliminating the unpleasant odors that plague Quick-e-marts across the globe. They're clearly the next logical step in the evolution of technology.
Back in 1999, during a time of widespread global prosperity, the electric car was little more than a pipe dream. It was a fascinating idea, but most of us were skeptical and couldn’t imagine it becoming a reality in the near future.
Well, we were partially right.
Hybrid cars have finally come into the limelight. Their combination of gasoline and electric power has made the idea of being 'carbon-conscious' a mainstream movement. Gasoline vehicles did the job but were too polluting and inefficient to remain acceptable. Electric cars, on the other hand, were nearly silent and produced minimal pollution, but they required a recharge every 50-100 miles. The hybrid was the perfect solution.
It’s true that we still have a few years (though perhaps fewer than we think) before every car on the road is fully electric, but the fact that many cars now run *at least partially* on electric power would have raised plenty of doubts just a decade ago.
8. Solid State Data Storage
Back in 1999, if you had an 8 gigabyte (GB) hard drive, you were the envy of all your friends. They’d ask, 'What could you possibly fill all that space with?'
Computer games came on a single CD-ROM, and we all knew we had to wait for the hard drive to spin up before each level would load. Some of us, the more careful with our pricey, spinning magnetic discs, would even run Scandisk and Defrag, which, of course, took hours to complete. Things were looking promising, though, as experts predicted that by the year 2000, 30GB hard drives would be available for around $200.
Now, imagine waking up in the middle of the night because someone outside your window is throwing pebbles at it. You open the window to find someone who looks just like you, but about 10 years older. They reassure you not to worry, because in just a decade, hard drives will be incredibly smaller, have no moving parts, be virtually weightless, and capable of surviving even the harshest environments.
Oh, and did I mention they’ll be way cheaper? That 8GB hard drive you paid $150 for? You’ll be able to grab one that fits in your pocket for just $15 down the street.
7. Broadband Internet
Do you remember ISDN? Integrated Services Digital Network? It's possible you do, but more likely you don’t. In 1999, it was about as close as we got to broadband.
For the majority of people, the internet was accessed through a 56k modem. Those who weren’t at least in the lower-middle class were stuck with a 14.4 modem, or worse: a 2400 baud modem. Just thinking about it gives you chills.
Back then, the internet was a much simpler place. Websites typically consisted of text, images, and the occasional embedded MIDI. Animated GIFs were seen as the future, and Flash was showing serious promise.
These days, the internet has evolved into a wonderland of bandwidth-hungry innovations. Streaming video and music, BitTorrent, and Cloud Storage have become everyday essentials, demanding nearly as much bandwidth as our hard drives. Try watching a 10-minute YouTube video back in 1999, and it would take 68 minutes to buffer. Today, if it takes more than 15 seconds, we’re on the phone with our ISP.
6. The iPhone
Let’s be honest, when the iPhone was first announced, most people thought it was just a prank.
Love it or hate it, the iPhone is undeniably one of the most significant shifts in consumer electronics over the last decade. It transformed our relationship with cell phones and sparked a wave of imitators. Now, even devices that aren’t related to phones are adopting iPhone-like features: touchscreens, flick-scrolling, app-based operating systems (with some form of an ‘App Store’), full-screen designs, drawer-style interfaces, and mobile browsing. These features have become standard, and for good reason—the iPhone did what everyone wanted, but no one had been able to pull off before.
Suddenly, having full, non-WAP-based internet at our fingertips became a demand of the masses. Many other devices offering similar features (such as Google Android, WebOS/PalmPre, etc.) emerged to compete, a clear sign of the iPhone's monumental influence over the entire industry. And we can't forget the iPhone 4G, which brought us video calling between phones—a feature we thought was pure science fiction just twenty years ago.
Describing the iPhone to someone in 1999 would be akin to explaining the Holodeck to someone today.
5. The Nintendo Wii
The Nintendo Wii has faced its fair share of criticism for all the hype, but no matter how you look at it, it’s a groundbreaking system. While its graphics may not match its competitors and its media capabilities are somewhat lacking, the sales numbers speak volumes: The Wii is a massive success. Why? Well, unless you live in a quarry that you call home, you know the answer.
Its motion-capture technology, along with a variety of other innovative interfaces (like the Wii Fit board, Nunchuck, and several attachments that make them feel more like their digital counterparts), has set it apart from the competition. It's so impressive that many users overlook its shortcomings. Even grandma has traded her spot on the couch for tossing a bowling ball down the lane.
Despite all the controversies surrounding the Nintendo Wii, it’s worth remembering that, in 1999, the Dreamcast was the best system on the market (considered ahead of its time). Alongside it were the Playstation and Nintendo 64. If you tried to convince someone to pause Super Mario 64 and told them that, in 10 years, there would be a system that allowed players to control games with almost free-motion movement, they would laugh at you and go right back to stomping Goombas.
4. HD TV
Like most technological innovations, we only truly understand its potential once we experience it. Television in 1999, by today’s standards, was incredibly fuzzy. The difference in visual quality between DVD and VHS was barely noticeable, and live TV was the highest quality it had ever been at that time.
Videophiles would often watch their DVDs on computer screens, where they appeared significantly sharper. The reason for the clarity was simply because the resolution was higher.
Standard definition televisions typically display at a resolution of around 640×480 pixels. This was enough to clearly see details, like the hairs on Grace’s head, but with an HD television, you’d be able to spot Will’s five-o-clock stubble.
Though HD televisions aren’t as common as their standard-definition counterparts, this is likely to change soon. As the cost of consumer-grade HD TVs continues to drop, the number of households in the United States with one is expected to grow dramatically this holiday season.
Do you think it will take another 10 years for every American home to have an HD TV in their living room?
3. The WikiReader
In the 2002 film *The Time Machine* (and the original masterpiece by H.G. Wells), a character named Vox refers to himself as “a compendium of all human knowledge.”
The mere idea of this (even in 2002) was remarkable. A single source, with an intuitive interface, that provided access to all recorded human knowledge — it was a concept that filled the average person with awe and wonder, something that felt like a far-off dream.
Then came Wikipedia. Now, many of you might be preparing to criticize Wikipedia for being little more than a chaotic patchwork of information. Yes, it’s true that there’s a lot of questionable content and that many references lead to other websites. However, the vast amount of verifiable information it holds makes it arguably the largest collection of human knowledge ever assembled.
As amazing as that concept is, it’s still somewhat believable. After all, huge websites filled with massive amounts of text existed back in 1999.
What would be truly unimaginable is having all of that knowledge in the palm of your hand, accessible whenever you need it. Now, anytime you’re asked something you don’t know, or find yourself in a tight spot without information, or even if you just want to instantly prove someone wrong, all of this is available at the drop of a hat.
“But I can do that with my phone,” you might respond. And yes, you’re right! In many areas, you can access Wikipedia on your phone through its data connection, as long as you’re within reach of a cell tower. But once your phone dies or you find yourself deep in the wilderness, access to that vast resource vanishes.
Not anymore. The WikiReader runs for an entire year on just two AAA batteries and doesn’t require any data connection whatsoever. It’s like having Wikipedia in your pocket, with no strings attached.
Who would have guessed that Vox would arrive before flying cars?
2. WiFi
In 1999, wireless technology was still in its early stages. While cell phones were becoming more common, they were still a luxury and noticeably larger than today's models. Text messaging wasn’t as popular, and data plans were light years behind what we have now. Aside from that, the main form of wireless technology we had were the radio stations playing in our cars.
The Internet was mainly accessed at home or, for faster speeds, at places like local libraries or computer labs at school. The web was rapidly gaining traction, and local area networking (LAN) had become a common feature for gaming and business communication. It was hard to find anyone who wasn’t at least somewhat familiar with computer networking.
The real issue, however, was the reliance on wired connections and the lack of mobility. If you took your laptop to work, it was essentially a small desktop tethered to the wall for network access. Anyone who participated in LAN parties during the late 90’s will remember how long it took to get everyone connected, “seeing” each other, and properly communicating. No one complained much back then, mainly because no one fully grasped how much easier it was about to become.
If you told someone back in 1999 that, within 10 years, they could “beam” a video from one computer to another across the house, they’d laugh and call it science fiction. How could you transmit such a large amount of data wirelessly? The idea would have seemed as strange as UFOs.
What is particularly odd about the WiFi trend is how it subtly integrated into the world of consumer electronics. It felt like WiFi quickly went from an intriguing topic you'd read about in Wired to being advertised on every coffee shop window. And just like that, you found yourself charging your laptop twice a day instead of simply leaving it plugged in and continuously connected to the network.
1. iPods
While it’s true that the iPod isn’t the only MP3 player available, the fact that it was the first MP3 player to find its way into the average person’s pocket is significant enough to place it on this list.
To fully appreciate the iPod’s impact on music, it’s important to realize that it did far more than just put a music player into the pockets of everyday people.
The iPod was crucial in the rise of the MP3 format. By offering the convenience of carrying a vast music library in your pocket, it created a demand for compacting as many songs as possible into a limited space. The MP3 format, with sound quality so close to that of CDs that the average listener can't tell the difference, made it possible to store thousands of songs where only a handful once fit. Today, MP3 albums are far more common than physical CDs, and the number of people listening to music daily has never been higher.
