2004 was the first year of the future

In aboriginal 2004, the satellite was shaking it similar a Polaroid picture, flocking to theaters to spot what was going to hap with each those hobbits, and wondering if that Tom Brady feline was thing special. Meanwhile, a fewer folks astir the satellite were inventing the web arsenic we cognize it now: A world-shaking societal web was brewing successful a Harvard dorm room. A Google worker was dreaming up the aboriginal of email successful their spare time. The coolest cellphone of each clip was conscionable astir to drop. The net was inactive a niche activity, but that was astir to alteration — and fast.

In truthful galore ways, the integer satellite successful which we present each unrecorded was created 20 years ago. Google went nationalist and began to ascend to regularisation the web. Facebook, Gmail, Firefox, Flickr, and Digg each launched — the twelvemonth Web 2.0 became the web. “Blog” and “the agelong tail” were connected nary one’s radar earlier 2004, and since then, they’ve been everywhere. The United States went done a contentious election, a clump of sequels dominated the container office, and Apple launched a caller merchandise that looked precise chill but was yet eclipsed by a amended merchandise a twelvemonth later. Okay, immoderate things ne'er change.

Every twelvemonth is simply a large twelvemonth successful tech, of course, but 2004 was an particularly large one. And The Verge didn’t beryllium yet! So, this week, we’ll person stories connected the champion and astir important gadgets and platforms that launched that twelvemonth and pieces astir the taste events that inactive impact the mode we unrecorded now. Basically, we’re going to blog similar it’s 2004.

Want to speech astir our stories, your memories, and each your raddest photos from the aboriginal aughts? Come bent here.