Skip to main content

Filed under:

This week in tech, 20 years ago

Share this story

As a person who covers day-to-day tech news, I often wonder how my writing might come off to someone in the future — and whether anyone will even be reading it. I can’t answer those questions, but I can do the next best thing: look back at what other people were writing 20 years ago.

Here are a collection of stories — big and small — that science and technology enthusiasts might have checked out two decades ago, and that can help inform the ways we think about the world today.

  • Adi Robertson

    Apr 20, 2019

    Adi Robertson

    Internet time and doomsday asteroids: this week in tech, 20 years ago

    Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

    It’s difficult to remember a time when online media wasn’t arranged largely around memetic cultural events. On any given April 20th in recent years, for instance, you can find all sorts of weed-themed stories pegged around the unofficial holiday for marijuana. That’s not so in 1999: a search for “420” brings up precious few results.

    Instead, the science and technology news of late April included one big company shake-up, some odd developments in space, and an extremely doomed game studio founded by Michael Crichton. Here’s this week in tech, 20 years ago.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Feb 23, 2019

    Adi Robertson

    ‘Don’t get mad, get a web page’: this week in tech, 20 years ago

    Still from Ghostcatching virtual dance performance
    “Ghostcatching,” Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser

    The year is 1999. Microsoft, accused of using its market power to strangle web browser company Netscape, is still embroiled in an antitrust lawsuit. The first sections of the International Space Station have entered orbit. Companies and governments alike are working to fix the Year 2000 Bug, which threatens to crash computers across the world. And email is maybe ruining the English language. Welcome to a new year of This Week in Tech, 20 Years Ago.

    This February, we’ll be following how the internet transformed writing, music, and revenge — plus stories about spy satellites and dances with computers.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Dec 29, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    The biggest video games, tech news, and apocalyptic anxieties of 1998

    Streak Hoverboard Racing
    Streak Hoverboard Racing
    Electronic Gaming Monthly, December 1998

    We’re heading into the last days of 2018, and by extension, the last days of our look back at 1998 — where the dot-com bubble was steadily inflating, cyberspace was transforming everything from crime to horoscopes, and the end of the internet (or maybe civilization itself) was just a year away with Y2K. And that means one thing in the media world: time for some retrospectives!

    I’ll be deviating slightly from the normal format by accepting a few pieces from both earlier in December and later in January, so I can offer a spread of analysis looking back at the year.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Nov 24, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    Furby hell: this week in tech, 20 years ago

    Photo by Christian Mazza / The Verge

    Half-Life is one of my favorite video game series, and in honor of its 20th anniversary, I spent a week replaying the first game — which feels incredibly refreshing in 2018. As expected, Valve Software didn’t make any surprise Half-Life 3 announcements to commemorate the milestone. But the team behind Black Mesa, an unofficial remake, released an evocative trailer for their game’s final levels. Those levels are due next year, keeping Half-Life growing even after two decades.

    The rest of this week in 1998 had a few noteworthy moments too. Read on for Will Smith, the International Space Station, and the year’s creepiest animatronic toy.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Nov 3, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    Remembering Grim Fandango: this week in tech, 20 years ago

    Grim Fandango

    You can find a lot of Halloween-themed coverage on The Verge, but this week also marked the Mexican holiday Día de Muertos — and the 20th anniversary of Grim Fandango, the classic adventure game that was heavily inspired by it. Grim Fandango was one of the last games from the acclaimed studio LucasArts, and its clever blend of noir pastiche and folklore has earned it acclaim since the very beginning, when GameSpot praised its “great writing and beautiful art direction.”

    There’s a less-than-proud tradition of artists ripping off surface-level Día de Muertos imagery, an issue game director Tim Schafer has discussed: “I knew I was appropriating someone else’s culture, so the idea was to be as authentic as possible and do as much research as possible,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2015. But Grim Fandango is a distinctive piece of art, full of puzzles that have (mostly) held up well. It was released on the Nintendo Switch just this week — and if you decide to play it, here are five other stories to check out while it’s downloading.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Oct 6, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    Men are from cyberspace: this week in tech, 20 years ago

    A few months ago, I mentioned that it was “unfortunately” too early to write about the release of beloved role-playing game Fallout 2. Well, Fallout 2 was released this week 20 years ago, and I am definitively not going to write about it — because I already spent half my summer immersed in the series while researching the never-released Fallout Online. Fortunately, Kotaku’s Kirk Hamilton has you covered with an entertaining analysis of Fallout 2’s first, frustrating level.

    Instead, this week’s stories cover cyber romance, Y2K, and one of the year’s worst new TV shows.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Sep 8, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    Happy birthday, Google: this week in tech, 20 years ago

    Original Google Stickers, 1999
    Google “stickers” from a 1999 archive of its site.
    via Internet Archive

    One of 1998’s biggest tech stories was the massive antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. It’s Monopoly Week on The Verge, so I wrote a bit about that lawsuit’s place in the ‘90s legal landscape. I also reviewed Antitrust, the 2001 thriller about a fictionalized Microsoft that murders software developers to steal their code.

    But today’s big news involves another incredibly important, potentially monopolistic tech company: Google, which was founded on September 4th, 1998. To celebrate, you can check out some “stickers” from one of Google’s earliest iterations. Or you can read on for news about celebrity chat rooms, flame mail, and a North Korean satellite.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Jul 14, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    Darren Aronofsky’s Pi day: this week in tech, 20 years ago

    Darren Aronovsky’s Pi
    Artisan Entertainment

    There is surprisingly little news about technology and the 1998 World Cup.

    The 2018 World Cup wraps up this weekend, and we’ve had lots to say about it — from how streaming video has made watching the games more convenient (unless it completely screws up) to how World Cup memes have made it all the way into Amazon’s Alexa. But in 1998... well, apparently it was the first year that officials used electronic displays during games. There were also a number of World Cup video games, including a ridiculous-looking Japanese arcade game and the first FIFA World Cup game from EA Sports — but these came out during the pre-Cup hype period, not the event itself.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Jun 16, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    Cybermom on the run: this week in tech, 20 years ago

    This week in 2018 has been dominated by video game news, since the E3 conference in Los Angeles just wrapped up. The most exciting game I could find from this week in 1998 was the Nintendo 64 puzzler Wetrix, which essentially combined Tetris with terraforming. You can dig up the game itself through emulator sites, and Nintendo Life wrote a great piece about its weird development history — it was the accidental byproduct of a completely different project called Vampire Circus, which was sadly never produced.

    Otherwise, the news this week tapped a rich vein of anxiety over digital avatars, online privacy, and having your baby on the internet.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    May 12, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    This week in tech, 20 years ago

    Newsweek iMac feature by Stephen Levy
    Newsweek’s iMac feature, May 1998
    Newsweek

    As a person who covers day-to-day technology news, I often wonder how my writing might come off to someone in the future — and whether anyone will even be reading it. I can’t answer those questions, but I can do the next best thing: look back at what other people were writing 20 years ago.

    Here are five stories — big and small — that science and tech enthusiasts might have checked out during the week before May 12th, 1998.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Apr 21, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    This week in tech, 20 years ago

    InfoWorld, April 20th, 1998
    InfoWorld, April 20th, 1998
    InfoWorld

    As a person who covers day-to-day technology news, I often wonder how my writing might come off to someone in the future — and whether anyone will even be reading it. I can’t answer those questions, but I can do the next best thing: look back at what other people were writing 20 years ago.

    Here are five stories — big and small — that science and tech enthusiasts might have checked out during the week before April 21st, 1998.

    Read Article >
  • Adi Robertson

    Mar 24, 2018

    Adi Robertson

    This week in tech, 20 years ago

    InfoWorld ad, March 1998
    InfoWorld, March 1998.
    Image: InfoWorld

    As a person who covers day-to-day technology news, I often wonder how my writing might come off to someone in the future — and whether anyone will even be reading it. I can’t answer those questions, but I can do the next best thing: look back at what other people were writing 20 years ago.

    Here are five stories — big and small — that science and tech enthusiasts might have checked out during the week before March 24th, 1998.

    Read Article >