The year 2000 seems like recent history, but in terms of technology, it’s light years behind 2023.
Wete and Company explain that just over 20 years ago, personal computers weren’t a staple in everyone’s home. The internet as a consumer marketplace faced a bit of uncertainty after the dot.com bubble burst. IBM’s reign over computing was fading. Social media? Not even a thing.
But the past two decades have seen remarkable and groundbreaking growth in IT. It has changed the way we work, live, play, shop, and communicate.
It’s no wonder then that the internet is regularly featured along with the wheel, nails, and the lightbulb on lists of the top 10 inventions that changed the world. Every year IT changes and evolves into something better than it was.
Here are just a few of internet technology’s biggest developments over the past 20 years.
Personal Computing Explodes
In 1981, IBM offered its first personal computer. It was called the Acorn, used Windows’ MS-DOS operating system and it sold for $1,565. Twenty years later, personal computing rose exponentially, and more people invested in the technology.
As the years progressed, people everywhere began investing in desktop or laptop computers, cell phones, or a PDA (remember those?). Personal computing isn’t going anywhere — but it is on track to continue to get better and better in the future.
YouTube
It all began in 2005 with a short video of a visit to a zoo. It’s now the most popular video-sharing site in the world. Content in the billions is accessed every single day on YouTube — and all for free. The unlimited knowledge accessible through the content on YouTube can far exceed what you can find in a library.
Whether it’s for entertainment, nostalgic television, or live feeds of historical events, YouTube has changed the way we see ourselves and the world.
Nearly 230 million Google searches are performed every hour — not bad for a company that only went public in 2004. Since then, Google has become much more than just a search engine.
Google translates nearly every global language, hosts countless emails and documents, and created Chrome, one of the world’s most popular internet browsers. And just a year after it went public, Google Maps was unveiled and made its way instantly to computers and smartphones everywhere.
Suddenly, getting lost became a thing of the past. Paper maps quickly became obsolete, and real-time satellite technology took over.
The Security Industry
The first computer worm wiggled its way onto computers in 1988, and even though it impacted a mere 6,000 computers or so, that was enough at the time to call it a “high-profile attack.”
Over the past 20 years, cybersecurity has become as advanced as the internet itself, and there’s good reason for it. Nearly 95% of companies have reported seeing their networks infiltrated by web criminals at some point, according to the FBI.
Information security has changed tremendously thanks to regulations related to IT, government oversight, and an ever-growing industry of IT security protectors claiming to be on top of every new cyber threat.
3D Printing
We can thank open-source software and better methods of manufacturing for 3D printing’s impressive rise in the last decade. Everything from human organs to entire houses can now be printed easily at home, in hospitals, colleges, libraries, businesses, and really just about anywhere. All it takes is a digital file.