The 12th Anniversary Spectacular

we launched this show. And originally I had a co host named Chris Palette, and Chris was also my editor for all the articles I wrote for how stuff Works dot com. And together we would tackle tech topics and Chris would make a lot of puns, like a lot a lot of them. Mean seriously, you guys seem to think that I do a lot of puns, but honestly, Chris went above and beyond. Now, over the years, this show has changed. Chris left to pursue a career he

had wanted for years. That we occasionally paying each other to check in, but we haven't really been in the same room for more than a few years now. But after Chris Lauren Vogelbaum joined the show as a co host, and she stayed on for a while, but she really wanted to develop her own shows, which makes total sense, and so she came into Tech Stuff to help me out. But she had her own goals and couldn't really pursue

those while also doing Tech Stuff. She's kicking butt on several shows now, including Saver, an incredible podcast all about food. If you haven't listened to the Saver podcast s a v O R. I highly recommend it. It's very informative, it's awesome, and you're gonna want to eat after every episode. Now, I had a few other guest co hosts who kind of jumped on for an episode or two after that, but for the most part, Tech Stuff kind of settled into what it is now, a solo host show about

tech and its role in society. And of course, most recently the show has changed again because we are now in the era of COVID nineteen. I'm pretty sure you guys are aware of that. So I'm recording my episodes from my home and I have been doing that since March. That means that not even super producer Tari is present when I record, it's just me sitting at my desk speaking into my microphone and recording it on my computer. Now, I'm going to be real with you guys, this gets

hard for me. I'm mostly an extrovert, and I really benefit from being around other people and bouncing ideas off of them, or taking short breaks when I'm doing my research so I can have a chat and that kind of re energizes me and lets me refocus. But at home, I don't really have at So it's been really challenging to research right and record these shows. Not that I don't like doing it. I still love Tech Stuff, It's

just harder now. And my hope is that this hasn't affected the quality of the show at all, apart from obviously a dip in audio quality since I'm in my home and not in an honest to goodness recording studio. But through all these changes, the show has continued to look at tech and its place in our world. So today I thought we would look back on one or two big stories from each year of tech Stuffs existence,

starting with two thousand eight. And I hope this goes well because I thought of it at the last minute and then scrambled to do it. So two thousand eight, the first episode of tech Stuff was about how the Google Apple Cloud computer will work, which I admit in retrospect may have been a tad off. But as for the story that really was dominating the news in two thousand and eight, would probably the announcement that Microsoft was making a bid for Yahoo. Now that actually happened in February.

It took place before tech stuff was really a thing. But whatever, I'm going by calendar year here, not month to month, because I don't want to go crazy. Microsoft, of course, is the software company famous for the Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office Suite, among many other things like the Xbox game consoles, and Yahoo was frequently referred to as a search engine, but really was more of a web portal that aggregated content and later actually

generated content, and it also did search. Microsoft's move was to make an offer of thirty one dollars per share of Yahoo's stock, So if you took all the Yahoo stock and you multiplied it by thirty one dollars, it meant that this would even out to about forty four and a half billion with a b dollar. Nine days later, Yahoo's board of directors responded with yeah, now, we're good.

Thanks anyway, Actually it was a little less firm of a know than that, because their board said that the four billion dollar deal actually undervalued Yahoo, and they countered that offer and they suggested that, you know, we really think that forty dollars per share is more fair. But that went nowhere. Microsoft would not agree to that, and

Yahoo would put a little more pressure on Microsoft. They made a deal with Google so that Google would actually power Yahoo's search engine, and this story kind of fizzled out as a result. It never really went anywhere. And of course, with the benefit of hindsight, we could say that maybe that was good for Microsoft, considering how Yahoo

kind of languished in the years since. Or you might argue that maybe if Microsoft had been able to go through with that deal, maybe they would have made something out of Yahoo that would be a bigger success. Looking at Microsoft and its history, that's a that's kind of a coin flip situation in my my point of view. Now. Honorable mentions for stories from two thousand eight that I didn't really do a deep dive into include Apple announcing

that it was leaving Macworld behind. It would actually continue to have a presence in two thousand nine, but that was going to be the last year that Apple would attend Macworld. Macworld, by the way, was an annual industry conference that really centered on Apple products. Uh the conference itself would last until two thousand and fourteen, when it

was kind of put on hold indefinitely. Windows seven was also announced in two thousand eight, and Google would launch the Chrome browser as well as the Android smartphone in two thousand eight. But let's move on to two thousand nine. This was another year of really big moves in the

tech industry. Google announced the Chrome operating System. They had already launched the browser back in two thousand and eight, but the Chrome OS would become a really light operating system, and it emphasized cloud services rather than native applications running on the computer itself. So this was at a time when cloud computing wasn't really a common term outside of

you know, a few companies in the computer industry. The Chrome operating System wouldn't stand as a major threat to either Microsoft or the Mac operating systems, but it did pave the way for lower priced laptops that didn't need the horsepower of other machines. Of the time, and that's because really all you needed was a good connection to the Internet in order to access the apps and services

you wanted to run. While I don't think the Chrome operating system really changed the world, it definitely helped set the stage for the era, as short lived as it was, of the netbook. Netbooks were super lightweight computers that probably would have uck around a bit longer if it were not for the fact that some of them were just too small and they had such crappy keyboards that it would legit hurt to work on them if you were

doing so for a long time. Perhaps more importantly for the long run was that Google's push for web based services moved us closer to adopting the cloud computing strategy more wholeheartedly. Between Google's emphasis on internet based applications and Apple saying the stage for smartphone apps the year before, there was a new focus on what the web could do beyond provide a place to browse for shoes, or

look at kitten videos or watch hamsters dance. Today, it's not unusual at all to rely heavily on web based programs. Even video game consoles have embraced this approach. Now, I wouldn't lay all of that at the feet of Google and say that the Chrome operating system is the reason why cloud computing became a huge thing. But I do think Google's influence helped move things along at a faster pace.

Another big thing to happened in two thousand nine was that Steve Jobs would leave and then come back to Apple. He had to take a medical leave of absence, and originally the reason they reported for his absence was given as as a hormonal imbalance, but in actuality, he was recovering from a liver transplant. Early in two thousand nine, Steve Jobs went on leave and he skipped Macworld. You know, Apple was still attending it, but it was the last

time Apple would be at the conference. That had to be a double punch to the Macworld attendees, because not only was the last time Apple would be there, but Steve Jobs himself would not be there, which meant that two thousand and eight was the last time they would see Steve Jobs present at Macworld. Now, on the one hand, it seems pretty crass to dig into someone's personal life and medical history and then to publish that as news.

But on the other hand, Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple. Moreover, you could argue that no other tech brand identified as closely with a foul under than Apple did with Steve Jobs. When the company held big press events, it was Steve Jobs who had stunned the crowd with revelations of new products. He was part leader, parts salesman, parts celebrity, and so Steve jobs health could also be viewed as an extension

of the company's health. The danger of having such a centralized figure is that there's a perception that forms that without that figure, the company is going to be in choppy waters, and when we get a bit further on, will revisit this. Honorable mentions for big stories in two thousand nine include the scuttle butt that eBay was preparing to sell off Skype, and that would mean it would exit what had widely been viewed as one of the

worst acquisitions in tech history. Microsoft and Yahoo were able to patch things up from the year before, and they agreed that Microsoft would supply Yahoo's search tool in an effort to compete against Google. The two thousand eight elections in the United States gave rise to more people you using online social networks to push political philosophies and agenda and to market campaigns online, and we can definitely see

that that is an even bigger trend today. Windows seven got a much better reception than the previous Microsoft operating system, Windows Vista, and now it's time to move to twenty ten.

This was a big year, a tumultuous year. Wiki Leaks made world headlines after receiving and then publishing an enormous number of documents that revealed tons of previously unknown or unacknowledged moves by various governments and government agents around the world, including and primarily those who call the United States home. This included documents about deliberate efforts to deceive the American

public about various operations around the world. It had some really heavy stuff in it, including information about how US government was working hard to protect a merror Rican officials and agents who had established practices around the world that could easily fall under the general category of torture, which I don't think I have to mention is truly awful. Other reports were equally disturbing and included incidents in which American forces had done stuff like firing upon journalists or

civilians and then tried to cover it up. A lot of information about other nations and leaders were also part of this information dump, including messages that revealed how various ambassadors or officials viewed other world leaders and that caused a lot of embarrassment in official channels around the world.

Wiki Leaks continues to play a big part in world politics, though in recent years there's been a lot more scrutiny and more accusations that the organization has its own agenda that goes beyond revealing the truth, that the truth plays a part in it, but it's a selective use of the truth in order to direct things down a particular path. Honorable mentions go to Gizmoto essentially stealing a prototype iPhone three gs then publishing a story about it, including a

breakdown of the internal components. That story gained Gizmoto a lot of heat in the tech journalism world for the ethically questionable decision to lift the phone and then run a story on it. Apple was put in the unusual position of having to defend a product as people found it really hard to get a signal and to make

calls on the new iPhone. This would later fall into a whole story that was referred to as antenna GIT, the idea that the placement of the antenna was creating a challenge to get and maintain a good signal, and of course one of the famous things in that is Steve Jobs claiming that the whole reason why there are problem was that people were just holding it wrong. In the US, Apple emerged from its exclusivity deal with a T and T and prepared to release the iPhone on

other cellular carriers. Plus, the company released the iPad, which was initially ridiculed for its name upon launch, and in September, the BP oil drilling rig called deep Water Horizon caused what became the largest marine oil spill ever, a colossal and catastrophic event, and the the consequences of that are something that's going to be felt for a really long time. Okay, it's time for us to cover two thousand eleven and

then we're gonna take a short break now. I don't think there's another story I could cover that had as big an impact on headlines in the United States as the death of Steve Jobs. He had retired as CEO earlier, in handing the company over to Tim Cook on October five, two thousand eleven he passed away, we saw people actually grieve for him in public. People left notes and flowers in tribute outside of Apple stores, and this sort of response is pretty much unheard of in the business world.

And again, it really pointed at jobs celebrity status, right that he was more than a business leader. He was a celebrity, a figurehead, and there was a lot of worry that Apple the company would falter. And even to this day you will occasionally hear people say something like that's not how Steve would have done it, though you don't hear it as frequently as you used to. However, despite the undeniable impact his death had on business, Apple the company has continued to do quite well in the

following years. Now, I would argue that as monumental as that story was, it should take a back seat to the events that were occurring in the Middle East through much of twenty eleven. While protests and demonstrations had begun late in two and various countries, we really saw an increase in twenty eleven as people in numerous countries in the Middle East leveraged apps and social media in order

to stage protests against various governments. We called it the Arab Spring, and this sort of use of social media would also serve as a building block for how great movements like Black Lives Matter use social media, as well as how hate groups take advantage of those same tools,

both to organize and two so discord. Honorable mentions for two thousand eleven include the rise of the amorphous hacktivist group Anonymous, thus bringing the guy Fox mask back into fashion, the launch of the Google Plus social network that, despite a fairly enthusiastic reception when it was in beta, never managed to get much traction against Facebook, and IBM. S Watson defeated two former Jeopardy champions in a special Jeopardy exhibition.

When we come back, we will pick up with twenty twelve, but first let's take a quick break. Early in in the United States, two pieces of proposed legislation grabbed world headlines. They were the Stop Online Piracy Act for A SOAPA, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act or PIPPA. These proposals emerged due to the entertainment industries pushed to find ways to prevent and crack down upon piracy online, and a lot of what the pieces were based upon was conjecture

and faulty reasoning. For example, the entertainment industry would claim enormous losses due to piracy. But the problem is you can't prove that because you can't prove that the people who downloaded something illegally would have otherwise purchased it legally. And if they would have never purchased it, let's say that they didn't pirate it, nor did they purchase it, then you can't call that a loss. That just wasn't

a sale. So it was based on faulty logic to begin with, and the implications meant that if these proposals were put into law, we would really see a fractured Internet where people in the United States wouldn't be able to even see that some sites exist because of effectively digital blockades. It would have been difficult to implement, it would have been hard to enforce, and if it did work,

it would essentially break parts of the Internet. Lots of sites held a simulated Internet blackout to raise awareness of the issues, and advocates for free exchange of ideas protested the proposals and the idea of regulating the Internet, and ultimately the United States government let the two pieces just die rather than risk a fallout with pushing it through

into law. Another big story was that Facebook colossally mishandled its initial public offering or i p O. Then, yeah, I'm butchering language, but man, this was such an enormous mistake. So this is the process that a private company has to go through in order to become a publicly traded company, or typically it's the way a privately held company becomes publicly traded. And this process ends with one where you've got this publicly traded company where anyone with cash can

buy stocks in that company. The process of an i p O is really complicated, and it involves a lot of analysts who have to look at a company. They have to assess its value in an effort to come up with a proposed opening stock price. So essentially these are people who say, yeah, you know, based on what we know about how much the company makes, its assets, its debts, all that kind of stuff, we figure that it would cost X number of dollars per share, assuming

that there are why number of shares available. A company's value is essentially the share price multiplied by the number of shares before going public, The estimated value of Facebook was one hundred four million dollars. The stock was to debut at nearly forty dollars per share, but there were technical glitches, including the fact that too many shares were issued. There were other issues just with Nasdaq, the stock exchange where this was happening, that had nothing directly to do

with Facebook. UH. There were also problems with Morgan Stanley that was the company that was acting as an underwriter for the I p O. They were accused of using some price influencing UH mathematics, so there were some shady things going on there. The stock price would ultimately take a huge hit over the course of twenty twelve. You know,

it came out just under forty dollars. It fell to a low of seventeen dollars and fifty five cents per share, so less than half of what debuted at UH and it meant that Facebook would have some ground to make up. But honorable mentions for two thousand twelve stories include the raid upon Mega Upload founder Kim dot Com in New Zealand, and Nintendo made a pretty big misstep with the launch of the Wii U, which never really took off, but

Felix Baumgartner definitely took off. He wrote a balloon up to the edge of space and then jumped for the longest refall ever and eventually parachuted to safety many many minutes after jumping out of the balloon. Also, Marrissa Meyer

would leave Google to become the new CEO of Yahoo Time. Hey, remember when I talked about that Wiki leaks dump and how it disrupted stuff, Well, that definitely set the stage for an even bigger story in the United States, and Edward Snowden, who was a contract worker for the n s A that stands for National Security Agency, leaked documents showing that the n s A had been instituting processes and policies and technologies that were at best gross violations

of privacy. The n s AS focus is monitoring, collecting, and processing communications, all in an effort to further the interests of national security for the United States. So when it comes down to it, it's a spy agency and it really tries to suss out what everyone is talking about all the time across all different communication media. Snowdon revealed that the n s A had put in some listening devices and had agreements with these various communications companies.

All of these agreements were classified. The companies were not allowed to disclose them. There was all this kind of dark veil of secrecy over everything and a lot of threats of repercussions if anyone broke that. And the whole idea was that it was scooping up information wholesale. It didn't matter if that information had anything to do with national security or not, didn't matter if the n s

A suspected someone or didn't suspect them. They were just essentially pulling all data in through a funnel, and that the agency had ways to search through all that information. His actions made snowed In a target and he fled the United States. But while the government condemned the leaks as being against the interests of the United States, a lot of citizens like me began to ask, Hey, um,

what are you actually defining as the United States? Because I live here and this, sure as heck doesn't sound like it's in my interests. So it didn't help that there were reports of folks who are working for the n s A who had made use of the agency's tools for their own purposes, such as to snoop on former lovers and stuff. Yeah, this was a huge, ugly story, but it wasn't the only ugly story of that year,

not by a long shot. This was also the year of the Boston Marathon bombing, a truly awful event, and it also served as a harsh classroom where we all learned what happens when you have the rapid dissemination and analysis of information. Within a very short time, data about the bombing was flying across the Internet, and you had a ton of armchair detectives who were all trying to figure out who perpetrated the bombing. This led to some hasty and poorly formed hypotheses that were totally on the

wrong track. People were brought under suspicion who had nothing to do with anything. So in short, the events following the bombing illustrated how dangerous misinformation and faulty assumptions can be. Honorable mentions for big tech stories of go to the embarrassing failure of the healthcare dot gov site in the United States. This was the online entry point for people looking to access the services created through the Affordable Care Act,

and the site was a shambles. It collapsed under even moderate traffic, and it created terrible bottlenecks and obstacles for people who are just trying to secure medical insurance. That was bad. Was also when Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, bought the Washington Post newspaper, setting the stage for a rivalry with a future US president. Netflix began to roll original content and started its transition from online video store

into a movie and television studio. The Pebble smartwatch, which was a big Kickstarter success story, debuted, though sadly Pebble would have a fairly meteoric rise and fall. Sony and Microsoft released the PS four and Xbox One game consoles respectively, and Elon Musk said, Hey, wouldn't it be neat if we had really fast trains and introduced the hyper loop concept. That is a concept we're still trying to get our

heads around and make a reality to this day. Okay, time for two thousand fourteen, and I really hate this one, but I think we really have to tackle it gamer Gate. Gamer Gate was a huge story in and it was one that I think taught us a lot of lessons, or at least presented lessons to us. I don't know that we actually learned that much because I'm seeing the same sort of stuff play out today. So let's talk about what game or gate was supposedly about and what

it was really about. So, on the surface level, gamer gate was supposedly about how certain video game reviewers and developers and journalists were all in cahoots. That the journalists and reviewers were publishing biased reviews and articles because of

the relationships they had with video game developers. So some of these accusations range from reviewers wanting to remain in good standing for fear that they might otherwise not get, you know, review copies, to even worse allegations that maybe some form of compensation was going on in return for

writing a positive story or a positive review. But what gamer gate really was about was about targeting people in the video game industry, whether in journalism or in development or whatever, and taking a no holds barred approach to attacking those people online. And the vast majority of those targets were women. So it really was like a concentrated campaign against women in the video game industry, and there

was an undeniable misogynistic streak in these attacks. The participants kept falling back to that surface level justification for what they were doing. They're saying, no, this is about ethics and journalism, but their methods and their links that they went to belied their true motivations. They would try to pressure companies to fire people that they were targeting. They

would publish private information about those targets. It's called doxing, where you reveal someone's you know, address, or the address of their families, and you're essentially calling for a campaign of harassment and worse stuff followed. Now, I'm not going to budge on this one, folks. You can argue at me until you are blue in the face that gamer Gate was really about ethics and journalism and that the extreme actions were the output of a minority. But that's

just not true. And it's the same sort of garbage that we see today when people will cling to any justification that lets them pursue what they want, even if they know deep down that it's wrong or unethical. So, as another example, people who protest that their individual liberties are being infringed upon because there's a stay at home order are clinging to an interpretation of liberty because they don't want to sacrifice some of their personal comfort in

an effort to curtail the spread of COVID nineteen. They consider their personal comfort more important than the overall safety of the community. We can see similar tactics for people who oppose the Black Lives Matter movement, or for those who think that Confederate memorials should be displayed in public, or people who oppose the LGBTQ community, and so on.

But as always I say, we have to use critical thinking and compassion, and we strip away the layers of bs to see the truth underneath, and then we address it in a fourth right way. Honorable mentions for two thousand fourteen stories are many. There were a slew of hacks that targeted both companies and celebrities, pulling out sensitive information and media and then just dumping it across the Internet. That was really gross. I saw Ya Nadela would take

on the job of Microsoft CEO. In two thousand fourteen, a web server software bug called heart bleed prompted security experts to issue some really big warnings, including the recommendation that people stay offline until more companies address this and patched their servers, because even changing passwords wouldn't be helpful because the bug would allow bad actors to actually see the new log in credentials anyway, so it doesn't matter if you change the locks if copies of the keys

are getting out to all the bad guys, right. Oh, and also Apple announced the Apple Watch, So there's our little bit of positive news. I guess sure. Two thousand fifteen all right, I hope I find some happy stories soon. I guess one thing I can talk about with two thousand fifteen is that it was the year that Microsoft launched Windows ten. Now, I skipped over talking about Windows eight when I covered the previous years, and there's a

reason for that, because Windows eight kind of stunk. It was obvious that the goal that Microsoft was pursuing was to create an operating system experience that could live on top of a suite of different hardware, from computers to tablets to smartphones. But Microsoft played a distant third place

to Google and Apple in the smartphone category. It was clear they weren't going to make up the room, and lots of people hated the layout of Windows eight on their computers, so it became a big pain in the neck. Windows ten saw Microsoft returned to a more familiar user interface for its computer operating system. Just as Windows seven proved to be a correction from Vista, ten was a correction from eight, and yeah, it was a little confusing

that the company just plane skipped over nine. But then we'd see Apple do the same thing a little bit later, so maybe nine is just a bad number for tech in general. Another day view that came out around in was the Amazon Echo. The Echo was one of the earliest examples of a smart speaker with a digital assistant. ECHOES version is named Alexa. While there had been other examples of voice activated assistance, I think you could make a case that Amazon helped bring this concept to the

mainstream public. Millions of people would go on to purchase smart speakers, whether they were made by Amazon or Google or some other company, and we started to see a lot more development in the virtual personal assistant space, including a place where developers could create apps specifically to interoperate with smart speaker devices and other gadgets that allow for

interaction with a virtual personal assistant. Honorable mentions include Google creating a new umbrella company called Alphabet, under which various Google properties, including Google dot Com, can exist, but they can remain related but separate entity, so you can have separate companies run by different heads and they can all

really focus on what they need to do. The scandal known as Diesel Gate also broke that year that revealed that Volkswagen had been installing devices in their diesel fueled vehicles that were meant to help trick a mission testing procedures because the cars were not performing up to code, so they were trying to kind of cheat on the

exam and then they got caught. The electric car company Tesla unleashed autopilot on the world, which has been a real controversy since there have been some terrible accidents that have happened while people were admittedly misusing autopilot. But part of this, I think comes from the hubris of Elon

Musk and the way he presents information. Oh and also that was the year that some hoverboards which aren't really hoverboards but whatever, made the news because a few of them had really bad lithium batteries and they had a tendency to catch on fire and perhaps even explode, which is not good. And when we come back, we're gonna move on to ten and y'all, I might not be ready for these next few years, and I already done

lived them, but we're gonna try anyway. Let's all kind of steal ourselves after this quick break, alright, so it's another tumultuous year, an election year in the United States. In fact, really I think at this point they're all

tumultuous years from this moment forward. But this really marked the beginning of some serious scrutiny on social media platforms, primarily places like Facebook, but also sites like YouTube and Twitter, and the role that these sites play when it comes to spreading misleading information a k. This is the beginning of a serious look at the so called quote unquote

fake news. Now. I tend to shy away from using terminology like fake news, not because I think the news isn't ache I think it frequently is, but rather because a lot of people just use fake news to describe any sort of messaging that opposes their own beliefs. If it doesn't align with what they personally hold to be true, it has to be fake. And I don't put myself above this. By the way, I know that when I encounter information that contradicts some belief that I hold, my

first reaction is to reject that information. But it really is important for all of us to resist that urge and to really examine claims more closely, because sometimes we might find that what we were about to reject is in fact true, and we have to come to terms with that, even if we don't like it. I would argue, especially if we don't like it, because that means we have the opportunity to change it anyway. The conversation about fake news really exploded in ten and has been a

frequent hot topic ever since. It became clear that a site like Facebook benefits from people spending more time on it, and so from that perspective, it benefits the company to promote posts that drive more engagement and keep people on Facebook longer. The actual value or validity of that content doesn't matter. What matters is keeping people active on Facebook

so that they see more ads. So it's really not in the company's financial interests to crack down on misinformation if that misinformation is actually keeping people tied to the platform, why would you bite the hand that feeds you. Now, this wasn't exactly new in but the whole conversation really boiled up in that year and it hasn't gone away since.

We're still watching Facebook try to avoid taking a more active role in cracking down on the spread of misinformation today because again, the company benefits from it financially Another explosive story pun intended in the Samsung Galaxy Note seven. This smartphone was supposed to make a big splash. It had this sexy curvy design and had a really high resolution display. It was supposed to be the smartphone of sixteen, but battery failures that led to things like fires and

explosions became an early big story. Samsung was forced to recall the handsets twice and reportedly fixed them, but more reports of fires would follow and the company ultimately had no choice but to discontinue this phone that represents an enormous financial loss. Meanwhile, you know you had companies like airlines around the world that we're placing bands on those phone saying you're not allowed to bring that in here

because of the potential risk. So this was a huge blow to Samsung, both financially and from a pr perspective. Honorable mentions go to Apple facing off against the f b I in a case where Apple refused to unlock an iPhone that had been owned by a terrorist. Tim Cook said this would set a terrible precedent that would undermine consumer confidence and it would compromise on expectations of privacy.

Vine the short form video service officially shut down that year and set the stage for the rise of TikTok. A little later on, and the medical tech company Pharaos infamously fell to pieces that year. We're still waiting to see what happens in some legal proceedings regarding the Farness story. Four years later, in ten, we would see a continuation of the fake news controversies, particularly with Facebook in the US.

It became clear that foreign parties, largely from Russia, were flooding Facebook with misinformation in an attempt to subvert the US democratic process. Also in the US, we saw a move to undermine the concept of net neutrality. Now, during the administration of Barack Obama, the government had begun to reframe internet access as a utility and created regulations that would prevent internet service providers from creating a fractured experience

across networks and devices. With a new administration in control at the US, we saw a dismantling of those regulations. But one of the biggest stories of the year centered around something that wasn't confined just to technology, and this was the hashtag me too movement. Women were stepping forward to confront unfair and sexist practices across numerous industries, and

tech was front and center. Social media would play an intrinsic role as women shared their stories and a movement built up around this, and one of the companies that was really singled out in this was Uber and the revelations of Susan Fowler, who was a former employee at Uber, it became clear that sexism and misogyny and harass then were all elements that were woven into the very culture

of Uber. Over the course of seen, story after story came out that highlighted a twisted and ugly corporate culture and a general policy that saw offenders get little to no reprimand if they were a high performer then they kind of had a free license to act in reprehensible ways. The company saw several executives resign over the course of the year, including the founder and CEO, Travis Kalnik, although

his resignation wasn't necessarily something he wanted to do. The company was also weathering a heavy storm brought by Google around allegations that Uber was making use of stolen proprietary information when it comes to self driving cars. So by the end of seventeen, there had been a full investigation of Uber's corporate culture, and that that concluded that the company needed massive fundamental changes. It was very critical of

the company. There was a massive change in leadership at the company, and there was a public commitment to a new corporate culture that was going to emerge from Uber. Now. I wish I could say that the company has since been a model of ethical practices, but that's not really true, and it honestly is a story for another time. Honorable mentions for two thousand seventeen include a rash of data breaches that exposed the information of millions of people to hackers.

Apple launched the iPhone ten. They skipped nine, but this was the tenth anniversary in the original iPhone, so you could at least argue for that. And TV companies quietly put the kai bosh on some three D televisions. They had been trying to market three D TV for years and years and years, but by seen the general consensus was that this was a non starter, and you started to see it kind of fade away from the features

in various televisions that we're going on the market. At that point, all right, two thousand eighteen, let's get going. This was the year when a little game called Fortnite saw incredible growth. Now the game had seen some modest success in its original format, but then the developers included a new Battle Royal style of play. Now that's a kind of game where a bunch of video game players have their characters all dumped onto a map, and then they all have to battle it out until only one

person or team remains. This game really took off at that point, and you started seeing tons of dancing memes that were unleashed upon an unwitting public. We've never been the same since. Now, the Battle Royal style game wasn't invented by Fortnite. In fact, another game, player Unknowns Battlegrounds had previously been one of the most popular online games,

and it was also a Battle Royal style game. There was no shortage of accusations that Fortnite was essentially copying pub g as we call it, But the games have a very different look and feel to them. They also have very different physics and gameplay mechanics. So while that basic idea was the same, I don't know that it's

fair to say that one copied the other. After all, there are other game modes that are standard in video games like you know, Last Man Standing or King of the Hill or um kill the Man with the ball. They're all these different variations that are kind of found throughout video games. I don't know that you can lay claim to a particular style. This was also the year that we started hearing more about plans for five G. That's the family of wireless data technologies that are going

to deliver information and incredibly fast speeds. It's not one tech, really, it's a whole bunch of different types of tech that work in slightly different ways, but all to get the same result, that is that super fast data transfer speed. And it might have been a little early to start hyping up five G because we're now in twenty twenty and that infrastructure still has a long way to go

to provide real coverage of five G technology. Plus now we have some people believing that somehow that tech is causing or spreading COVID nineteen in a news flash, it is not. And we also got the massive Cambridge Analytica scandal making headlines in ten Now, the actual events that precipitated those headlines would stretch back a few years earlier.

It just became public and I've done episodes about this scandal, so it's it's a complicated story, but essentially, uh, an app developer was able to use a loophole in Facebook's ap I to gather an enormous amount of information about Facebook users without their consent or knowledge, and on top of that were efforts to use that information to manipulate public discourse about political matters, which is gross but honorable.

Mentions go to the rise of the electric scooter and the various companies that created a sort of rideshare a eletric scooter business that all started to really kick off in Apple became the first company to reach a trillion dollars invaluation, though it would lose some ground before the end of the year and dip down below trillion by the end of and oh yeah, Movie Pass kind of

imploded that year too. Okay, so we're up to twenty nineteen, and since is not yet over, though it feels like it's lasted an eternity, and also because this episode is going to start running long, this is gonna be the last full year we look at. So twenty nineteen was when we saw TikTok gain explosive growth, and as I mentioned earlier. The fall of Vine really set the stage,

and TikTok was able to capitalize. The company has since come under scrutiny, both from privacy advocates and officials who worry that the Chinese company that owns the service might be collecting data on behalf of the Chinese government. That's a story that still is unfolding today. We also saw the debut of Disney Plus in twenty nineteen, along with the announcement of about a zillion other new media streaming services, all of which are vying for our subscriptions and our attention.

I think I might have to do a full rundown on all the major streaming players out there and how they're all trying to compete for that, you know, limited number of assets. It's getting awfully crowded and a little frustrating. Um. You know, we used to think we wanted cable a la cart where you could just order the specific channels that you've wanted, and everything else you would just ignore,

you wouldn't get because you never watched them anyway. And we thought for a while that streaming services we're going to kind of do that. And now streaming has sort of become its own monstrous thing that is at least as frustrating as cable was. In twenty nineteen, we also saw a lot of calls from various parties to make serious steps into dismantling and breaking up big, big tech companies,

tech companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook. And the argument is that these companies have grown so large and so powerful that not only are they largely monopolistic for their various you know, industries, they also stand as a

legit threat to things like democracy. The companies are pursuing the interests of their shareholders, which really means that they're looking to boost the value of the company, and sometimes or maybe even oftentimes, that means they operate in a way that might not be in the best interest of you know, everybody else. So there's been some pushback against these big companies. But then a little thing called the coronavirus sort of threw a monkey wrench in that whole process.

As for the coronavirus definitely has dominated most of the early part of the year, it continues to be an

enormous part of the current conversations. The Black Lives Matter movement has also become a huge talking point, and tech plays an important role in that discussion to everything from the tools that people used to help organize and spread messages, to the misinformation campaigns that have been spread to try and undermine the movement, to a real problem that exists with tech companies with a lack of diversity and inclusivity, which results not just in unfair practices from a corporate level,

but it means that the stuff those companies are producing, they're not really serving their customers that well. And we've got a lot more coming in twenty including you know, there's some fun stuff, not just the heavy, heavy stuff I'm talking about right here. We've got some fun stuff like the release of new video game consoles from Sony

and from Microsoft. However, there's no doubt that there's going to be other really big, important and difficult stories that will unfold in the coming months, and our challenge is not to shy away from that, but to really tackle it and to say what does this mean? What can we do about it? How can we make things better? Those are questions we should always be asking ourselves, and sometimes the answer might be I don't know what to do, and the important thing is to try and look for

people who can help. But really, if we can do something we absolutely should, we shouldn't just, you know, shoulder that burden onto somebody else. As for tech Stuff, we're set to keep on keeping on. I have some plans for how I want this show to evolve, but those are going to take some time to really take shape. However, I really hope to see this show continue to grow and become more than what it already is, and I'm really excited to have you guys along for the journey.

In the meantime, if you have suggestions for future topics we should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me. You can get in touch on Twitter. The handle is text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows.