How we got here
Responsibility for the technological revolution could possibly be credited to one man: Bill Gates. This one man formed the Information Technology (IT) industry as we know it today, which all started with the exploitation of fortunate opportunities, an incredible amount of dedication and ambition, and the formation of an entire empire known as Microsoft. Although Bill Gates is not solely responsible for the historic moments that changed human civilisation, he played a massive role. Without him, it’d be hard to imagine what this world would be like today.
In 1990, six months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Microsoft released Windows 3.0, the breakthrough operating system that made IBM PCs much more user-friendly. The fall of the Berlin Wall eliminated the physical and geopolitical barrier that held back information, stood in the way of shared standards, and kept society from having a view of the world as a single unified community. But it was the rise of the Windows-enabled PC that really changed things; it popularised personal computing and eliminated the limit on the amount of information that any single individual could amass, author, manipulate and diffuse.
Although computers existed before the release of Windows 3.0, such as the Apple II home computer by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1977, and the IBM PCs released with MS-DOS in 1981, the IT industry did not really take off until this historic moment. At this moment, the Apple vs. Microsoft operating systems war began, and the revolution enabled the digital representation of all important forms of expression.
This event made it possible for individuals to author their own content in digital form right from their desktop. After a common interface was defined, Microsoft extended their office suite, which allowed people to manipulate information on computer screens in ways that increased productivity. As Bill Gates put it, this provided people with “information at your fingertips.”
During this period, scientists started to discover that multiple PCs could be connected with dial-up modems, and they could connect their PCs to their telephones and send messages through telecommunication service providers. This was a time when individuals and their machines could talk to a few other people with machines better and faster, and increased productivity. Thus, the Internet was created.
In 1991, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee created the first website and the World Wide Web was born. Tim was also responsible for the creation of the first web browser. From this moment on, the Web and the Internet exponentially grew as one. Although this formed interest for the technology, it wasn’t until 1994 when a small start-up team decided to make the Web easy to use for everyone, creating the Netscape browser. Combined with the release of Windows 95, which had in-built Internet support, and used by most people in the world, things were never the same since. The Internet was no longer just for early adopters and computer literate people.
Netscape became massively popular, until Microsoft caught on and invested a large sum into the production of Internet Explorer. After monopolistic competitive pressure, Netscape fell and was eventually sold in 1998 to AOL. Microsoft was then deemed as the leader in Internet browsing technology, as well as owning the desktop. The whole world had become dependent on Microsoft technology, resulting with Bill Gates becoming the richest man in the world.
Internet Explorer ruled the world, until the release of Mozilla Firefox in 2004, which was released as an alternative free and open source Internet browser. With the help of the open source community, Firefox quickly started to overtake Microsoft’s market share, and a crowd of other competitors arose. This pushed for further innovation of the web, and the desktop slowly began to fall.
The success of the open source browser was due to some events that occurred previously, which also helped continue the rise of the Internet and the Web. Pioneer Brian Behlendorf was a founding member of the Apache Group, who later served on the board of the Mozilla Foundation in 2003. In 1995, Brian, with the help of eight other core contributors that he gathered, started the Apache project as a fork of the NCSA codebase. Not long after the Apache server became the most widely used HTTP server in the world, and served up the majority of the websites on the Web. This gave birth to the community-developed software industry, with individuals collaborating with each other, competing even, using the Internet, and creating lots of new and interesting software to further increase productivity. This quickly became a very hot topic in the IT industry, and many companies formed on the basis of open source software development, including the Mozilla Foundation. This movement was formed by the desire of people wanting to express their creativity and inner genius, desire to be a part of something big, and the desire to affect the lives of people all around the world. This created a new workforce consisting of passionate individuals who worked for free, for the pure thrill, and continued moving society forward, cutting away profits from larger companies such as Microsoft.
With this rise of Web usage, people formed the desire to upload their own content, and to become their own authors. First, blogging rapidly gained in popularity after 1999, and a complete new revolution began. Then it was Wikipedia in 2001, the community-driven holder of information. People were no longer satisfied with just reading. People wanted to upload their own content, and share their own thoughts. People wanted to upload comments about other websites they visited, and people wanted to engage with other people, sharing and collaborating about anything they could think of. This theme carried through the global rise of the Internet and the Web.
With all this information being uploaded to the web, people required a more efficient way to find the content that they were looking for. In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin theorised an idea to use mathematics to analyse the relationships between websites. Not long thereafter Google was formed, which overtook Microsoft’s initial goal as the leader of providing individuals information at their fingertips. Google also created a new market for advertisers, one that was previously catered only by television, radio broadcasts and printed media. As a result, this started a new revolution of free Web based services funded by advertising.
Technological advancements were occurring rapidly, with new innovative start-ups forming regularly, often later being bought out by larger companies. But entrepreneurship went quiet for a while after the major technology leaders continued ruling the world. That is until Mark Zuckerberg formed the desire to make his visions a reality with the creation of Facebook. In 2004, the social networking phenomenon was unleashed, and Facebook quickly became a leader of the Web. In a time span of several years, the Facebook user base grew large enough to compete with the Google. This led to a series of rapid innovations on the web, and the social networking industry was popularised and transformed, consisting of many successes, but mostly failures. Facebook continued to be the leader of social networking.
During all these technological advancements, Apple was secretly recuperating after being almost annihilated by Microsoft. In 2001, the iPod was first launched, which completely changed how people interacted with technology. All of a sudden, people became music composers. It made people feel special. People could carry around their own form of entertainment, designed to their own specific tastes, everywhere, and could use it anywhere.
Then Apple redefined the mobile market with the introduction of the iPhone, which focused on making technology simpler, and making it fun to use. Apple further continued building upon the mobile market with the release of the iPad, with an effort to try and move society to a stage where mobile computing is the most predominant form of technology. Apple turned the tables, and now Microsoft is struggling to keep up.
These innovations and events formed the basic building blocks of the society we live in today. Microsoft formed the desktop and made people more productive, allowing the IT industry to grow. The Internet allowed people to connect with each other, and formed the Web. Google allowed people to search for the information they needed more quickly. Facebook allowed people to talk to each other and keep in touch more effectively. Firefox started pushing for the Web to take over the desktop, and spurred a new series of innovations. Apple quietly tried to redefine markets, and changed how people interact with technology.
In a short period of time, civilisation has completely changed its way of thinking, and a turning point in history has formed. All this of this was possible based on the fact that people will change their habits quickly when they have a strong reason to do so, and people have an innate urge to connect with other people. But this is only the beginning…
