August 17, 2025 • 44 mins
We're excited to share the first episode of Peabody Award-nominated podcast Long Shadow’s new season, Breaking the Internet.
Hosted by Pulitzer Prize finalist and historian Garrett Graff, Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet charts the evolution of the internet – from the optimistic days of the dot-com boom to our present moment. Produced by Long Lead and distributed by PRX, this seven-part series aims to tell the story of humanity's greatest invention, and how it's led us to the biggest crisis facing society today.
In this specific episode, you’ll travel back to 1993. Gas is just over a dollar a gallon. Minimum wage is $4.25 an hour. Mass media is hitting its apex, and American culture is about as homogenous as it’s ever been. And somewhere in the background of all that, this new thing called the World Wide Web just became available to the general public…. then a computer bug threatened to shut it all down forever. To listen to more episodes, follow Long Shadow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. This week,
we're doing something a little bit different instead of our
normal news roundup. I'm so excited to share an episode
of the Peabody Award nominated podcast Long Shadow Breaking the Internet.
(00:29):
This is the first episode of their new season, which
dives into the history of the Internet. Is hosted by
Pulitzer Prize finalist and historian Garrett Graff and charts the
evolution of the Internet from the optimistic days of the
dot com boom to our present moment. It's an ambitious
project produced by Long Lead and distributed by PRX, a
seven part series exploring how choices made by tech companies
(00:50):
and others in those early days shape the Internet into
what it is today. In this specific episode, the first
in a seven part series, you'll travel back in time
to ninety three. Gas is just over a dollar gallon,
the minimum wage is for twenty five an hour. Mass
media is hitting its apex, and American culture seems to
be getting ever more homogeneous, and somewhere in the background
(01:12):
of all of that, this new thing called the World
Wide Web just became available to the general public. Then
y two K threatened to shut it all down forever.
If you liked this episode, be sure to follow Long
Shadow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Now here's the full episode.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
When was the last time you felt good about the Internet?
The online landscape today is a harrowing one. People screaming
at each other on social media, violent videos going viral, cyberbullying, racism, misogyny.
It's hard to say for sure where the Web started
to turn sour, but a case can be made that
(01:55):
the last good day of the Internet was February twenty sixth,
twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
How could we not start with this video to lamas
on the run in Sun City for hours today?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
It goes by that morning people around the country were
huddling around their monitors. A news event was unfolding that
was holding the Internet in a trance.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
The mussy video of the day Llamas on the Lucy
in the Valley.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
They were at an event. A pair of lamas had
escaped from a visit to a nursing home in Sun City, Arizona.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
A man let go of his robe and before we
knew it, it was Lama's Day out here in sun.
Speaker 6 (02:30):
City, so we're double choppering the two Lamas for the day.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
We've learned some helicopter crews documented the chase as the
Lama's dodged handlers.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Oh Lama, Lama's head button that is not good.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And wove in and out of oncoming traffic.
Speaker 6 (02:45):
This is crazy.
Speaker 7 (02:46):
It would be really neat to be in those cars
on the streets with the Lamas.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Online, the incident was going viral under the hashtag Lama drama.
Speaker 7 (02:57):
The entire Internet, my office included, was just obsessed with
these escaping Lamas in Arizona.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Kate's Holderness and her colleagues at BuzzFeed were watching the
Lama drama from their office in New York and.
Speaker 7 (03:10):
There was like helicopter footage and news coverage and it
was just hours of everyone being like, Oh, are they
going to catch the Lamas.
Speaker 8 (03:18):
They do have a couple of guys with lasses around there,
but they've tried to throw these things.
Speaker 6 (03:22):
Oh yeah, they got it with one.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
The Lama's finally caught and headed back to their trailers.
Speaker 7 (03:29):
They finally didn't catch the lamas.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Believe it or not watching Lama videos was a big
part of Holderness's job at BuzzFeed, trying to predict what
would go viral and how to capitalize on it. At
the time, BuzzFeed was the king of viral content, with
two hundred million visitors a month.
Speaker 7 (03:52):
We had the attitude of if a piece of content
makes you feel something, you should post it.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And towards the end of that day, as the Lama
drama was dying down, Holderness got a message on BuzzFeed's
Tumblr account.
Speaker 7 (04:08):
Hey, Buzzby, can you look at this thing that I posted?
My friends and I are losing it. We're freaking out,
and I was just like, I don't see what the
big deal is. It's a blue and black dress. I
leaned over to two of my colleagues who were sitting
beside me, and I was just like, hey, guys, what
color is this? And at the exact same time, one
of them said white and gold and one of them
(04:29):
said blue and black.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Her colleagues were looking at the same picture of a
dress and seeing completely different colors.
Speaker 7 (04:38):
They immediately started debating with each other.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Their argument drew people in from the rest of the office.
Speaker 7 (04:45):
Within ten minutes, there were twenty people standing behind my
desk just screaming at each other. Just couldn't believe people
were seeing a different colors. I was like, if we're
fighting about it, maybe the rest of the inner will
fight about it. So I threw it up into a
BuzzFeed post, hit publish, and then left work. Didn't really
(05:08):
think much about it until I got off of the subway.
My phone kept crashing. I couldn't load Twitter, and I
had dozens of text messages from friends and colleagues and
family members saying, you're ruining our lives, Like, what did
you do? I looked on Twitter at that point, I
(05:31):
had like several thousand notifications and everyone was freaking out,
just like the entire Internet was freaking out. It started
making the rounds through New York media.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
Well it's black and blue or gold and white, and
has us debating all over.
Speaker 6 (05:46):
It's golden white, blue and black, yellow and white for sure.
Speaker 9 (05:50):
Well, my wife says it's blue and white.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
And then it just spiraled from there. Taylor Swift is
tweeting about it now, Kim Kardashian tweeting about it. It
was just it was absolutely surreal. Most of the people
who voted in the poll voted white and gold, which
just as bonkers to me because I've never been able
to see a white and gold.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
The dress would go on to become one of the
most viral means to ever break the Internet. It drew
everyone in from the sidelines in a mostly fun battle
over the very nature of our shared reality.
Speaker 7 (06:26):
I think it went viral because people just love fighting
over low stakes things.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
At the time, it wasn't clear why the dress became
such a viral phenomenon. We didn't know it, but the
Internet landscape was shifting beneath our feet. It wasn't about
keeping up with what your friends and family were doing anymore.
It was about feeding you content you would click on,
and social media companies knew that what people really engaged
with was content that was controversial, content that was device,
(07:01):
even things that were supposed to be fun, like the
dress or sparking heated arguments, and as a result, the
Internet was getting angrier.
Speaker 7 (07:12):
The number of posts that I saw of people like
using wildly aggressive language, you know, not only towards me,
but it's awards other people calling people just the worst
names and the worst slurs. I should not have gotten
death threats and rape threats for posting.
Speaker 6 (07:31):
A picture of a dress.
Speaker 7 (07:33):
It's like, really, guys, it's a picture of a dress.
It's not that deep.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
The dress was right there on the crest of a
powerful wave. It was both a symbol of harmless Internet
fun and also a sign of division to come.
Speaker 7 (07:52):
It's a metaphor for the fact that people can approach
an objective fact and be so f are divided in
how they view and interpret that fact.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
It's been ten years since the dress, and today the
Internet is in a state of turmoil. The line between
online and off is increasingly blurred. Fights over the nature
of our realities seem to rage every day, but now
the stakes of those fights are higher than ever, and
we're left to wonder what went wrong.
Speaker 7 (08:26):
I think a lot went wrong. I think a whole
lot went wrong. The Internet we have in twenty twenty
five is fractured.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
How did we get here to the moment we're in
right now? With the Internet, a tool designed to give
everyone access to all the world's information, has become a
fire hose of lies, hoaxes, and conspiracies.
Speaker 10 (08:51):
The anti vaccination movement is growing due to a new
wave of conspiracy theories chared through social media.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
The force vaccinating or children.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Websites that brought friends together have also become rallying points
for hate groups and hotbeds of extremism.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
The in cells are part of a larger online group
that's been called the Mana Sphere.
Speaker 6 (09:11):
Their frustration festering online can turn violent.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
But it wasn't always like this. The Internet also gave
power to the people, and it helped to topple autocracies.
Speaker 11 (09:23):
Opposition activists organize them off on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
That online energy could actually be converted into on the
street action.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
In this season of Long Shadow, we're going to chart
the evolution of the Internet from the optimistic days of
the dot com boom to our present moment, a time
when the Internet is at the heart of so many
of our problems. The story of the Internet is also
a story of greed. The world's richest companies used algorithms
to monetize attention and maximize profit, algorithms that have changed
(09:56):
the way that we interact with each other online and
offa flying.
Speaker 6 (10:00):
The short term dopamine driven feedback loops that we have
created are destroying how society works.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Along the way, we became the product and the target,
and we learned that the Internet could be turned against us.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
It's the protesters. He've gone on trial.
Speaker 7 (10:18):
People were being imprisoned and held indefinitely because what they
posted on social media.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And used by adversaries abroad to try to destroy America
from within.
Speaker 12 (10:28):
The Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United
States undermine public confidence and democracy.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
How did a tool offering so much knowledge drive us
into an existential debate over our shared reality.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
We're living in a post fact world with fake news,
echo chambers and deep distrust of media.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
How did a tool with the potential to lift all
voices end up amplifying the very worst of them.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
The result is a system that amplifies division, extremism, and polarization.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
How did a tool with the ability to fuel democracy
become a weapon aimed at the very heart of it.
Speaker 11 (11:08):
There is an alignment of interests that runs through Silicon
Valley to what is now a coming autocracy.
Speaker 6 (11:18):
It's a coupe.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
This is the story of mankind's greatest invention. It's also
the story of the biggest crisis facing society today. My
name is Garrett Graff from Long Lead and pr X.
This is Long Shadow Breaking the Internet. Episode one the
(11:42):
end of the world as we know it.
Speaker 13 (11:46):
Imagine a world where every word ever written, every picture
of a painted, and every film ever shot could be
viewed instantly in your home. It sounds pretty grand, but
in fact that's already happening on something called the Internet.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
The year is nineteen ninety three, gas is just over
a dollar a gallon, minimum wage is four twenty five
an hour. Mass media is hitting its apex, and American
culture is about as homogeneous as it's ever been. Everyone
is listening to the new Whitney Houston song on their walkman.
Ninety million people are tuning in to watch OPRAH interview
(12:24):
Michael Jackson.
Speaker 13 (12:25):
What did the he he thinks?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
And there's one movie everyone has to see.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
In theaters, Jurassic Park. Hold on your books.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
But somewhere in the background of all that, this new
thing called the World Wide Web just became available to
the general public. For decades, up until now, the Internet
has been a thing used by computer nerds, scientists, and
the military. But the World Wide Web is meant to
be used by anyone and everyone.
Speaker 13 (12:58):
You can do more and just send messages on the Internet.
There's loads of useful information in here. You can get news, recipes.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
And the world Wide Web is better looking. It even
has pictures on it, and.
Speaker 6 (13:09):
I found this satellite weather map in there.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
The web is still brand new, and only a select
few seem to understand what it's good for. What about
this Internet thing? You do you know anything about that? Sure?
Speaker 6 (13:21):
What the hell is that?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Exactly?
Speaker 10 (13:23):
Well?
Speaker 6 (13:23):
What do you write to it?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Like mail?
Speaker 10 (13:25):
Alison?
Speaker 14 (13:26):
Can you explain what internet is?
Speaker 6 (13:28):
That's wild? What's going on?
Speaker 3 (13:29):
You can send electronic mail to people.
Speaker 6 (13:31):
It is the big new thing.
Speaker 9 (13:38):
I mean when I heard about it, I definitely wanted
to try it out.
Speaker 15 (13:42):
You know.
Speaker 9 (13:43):
I had this dial up line and we used it
to download the Worldwide Web.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
This is Stephen Levy. He's been writing about the Internet
for publications like Wired for four decades, but his interest
in the subject really took off when the World Wide
Web came out nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 9 (14:02):
It was pretty easy to use. It was incredibly slow,
and I would spend hours and hours sitting in my
little office waiting for the pages to load. There were
so few websites that every day you would learn which
websites came on. There will only be a handful. Here's
a website about Elvis here's a website about the grateful dead.
(14:22):
Here's a website about medicine or politics or whatever.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Even in its quirky infancy, the World Wide Web was
tearing down the barriers of communication. Suddenly, through email, instant
message and chat rooms, people all over the world could
communicate in one big, open forum. And the crazy part
is that back then online conversations were pretty civil.
Speaker 16 (14:46):
There's an interesting kind of restraint that you find. I mean,
there's not a lot of cursing or swearing. One would
think if you're anonymous, you do anything you want. But
people have their own sense of community and what we
can do.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And the content was pretty tame too.
Speaker 9 (15:03):
There was this one site in Cambridge, England. The people
in their computer department had a coffee room and they
put a camera on the coffee pot and they put
it on the web and people all over the world
could check the status of the coffee pot and I
would check in like three or four times a day.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
It's hard to explain now how being able to connect
to a live stream of a coffee pot in another
country felt revolutionary, But people like Levy knew that if
you could access that from the comfort of your own home,
one day you were going to be able to access everything.
Speaker 9 (15:42):
A lot of the people who were the philosophers of
the Internet preached an idea that information should flow as
freely as possible. This is something that's going to democratize everything.
It's going to level the playing field, and big institutions
will have to face competition from the little guy everywhere.
(16:02):
Citizen journalists could spring up and come up with their
own publications. Governments would lose power as people could share
information and spread it. People thought it was going to
topple authocracies, so it was an exuberant time where people
celebrated the potential of the Internet. I definitely felt that
(16:25):
it was going to be a democratizing force.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
The Internet was going to change the game. But in
nineteen ninety three it only had about fourteen million users.
By nineteen ninety four, twenty five million people had locked on,
many of them through services like compu Serve, Prodigy, and
America Online. The Web was still so small all of
its sites could fit in a book called The Atlas
(16:51):
to the World Wide Web, but it was starting to
become a household name.
Speaker 7 (16:56):
Internet is that assa computer network, the one that's becoming
really big now.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
The Internet's founders believed in its democratic power, but its
real potential was in commerce. In nineteen ninety four, Pizza
Hut became one of the first companies to sell something online,
a large pepperoni and mushroom with extra cheese.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
Anyone warned some pizza.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
It didn't take long for big companies to see the appeal.
By nineteen ninety six, there were forty million people surfing
the Internet, spending more than half a billion dollars a
year on online shopping. Who are you? I'm Jeff Bezos.
What is your claim to say?
Speaker 6 (17:37):
I'm the founder of Amazon dot com.
Speaker 9 (17:40):
When Amazon appeared unbelievable, the bookstore with a catalog with everything.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
As the revenues of companies like Amazon sword and people
logged onto the Internet by the millions, it sparked a
feeding frenzy of investors willing to buy into dot com
companies at any price. They dumped obscene amounts of money
into Webster. You either don't remember or have never heard of.
Speaker 17 (18:03):
Oh they've got it, you fro What crazy dot com like?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Pets dot Com, a pet supply company with a dog
sock puppet as a spokesman.
Speaker 17 (18:11):
Squeaky toys or new collars leeches.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Even that company was valued at almost three hundred million dollars.
The Wall Street training floor was a mosh pit as
a stock market balloon to record highs on the back
of all that dot com speculation. It was perfect. The
Internet was a cash count, but it was also good
(18:37):
for society. It was going to change everything about how
we lived, communicated, shopped, and shared. And in nineteen ninety nine,
with two hundred and eighty million users in growing, there
was nowhere to go.
Speaker 18 (18:50):
But I.
Speaker 19 (18:51):
Can't believe how easy it is to serve the net.
It's so easy to learn and so much fun to
play on serfs up see you on the Net.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
From the beginning, the Internet was just a tool. It
reflected the people who were using it. In the early nineties,
those people were mostly polite nerds, but it's more and
more people piled in. Some of the problems we now
recognize as part of a free and open Internet started
to emerge.
Speaker 15 (19:22):
Two years ago, Elliott pulled the plug when she found
her teenage sons downloading pornography.
Speaker 7 (19:28):
We found sado masochism on our computer, available at the
flick of a button.
Speaker 9 (19:33):
Pornography was something that there was like a big panic
about the idea is that in loving year old kid
is going to see more pornography than a person like
me saw in his entire lifetime.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
Children sometimes are exposed to images parents don't want them
to see because they shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
In nineteen ninety six, President Bill Clinton signed the Communications
Decency Act into law.
Speaker 15 (19:56):
The law makes it a crime to display indecent are
patently offensive words or images on the Internet, but opponents
say the law is patently unconstitutional.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Parts of the law were struck down the following year
for violating the First Amendment right to free speech, but
a debate started that still reaches today. How would we
deliver on the democratic promise of the Internet that speech
and information should be free while also keeping it safe.
The upside of the Internet was that it allowed for
(20:29):
unfettered access to information, but people were starting to learn
that that was also its downside. This man asked to
remain anonymous.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
His fourteen year old son, paid nine dollars and got
the recipe for this pipe bomb from the Internet on
his home computer.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What would happen if volatile information got into the wrong hands.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
By using those computerized directions? This is the results We.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Have enough problems in America without our kids learning how
to become junior terrorists.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
But perhaps the Internet's most obvious and glaring problem was
just starting to dawn on people.
Speaker 6 (21:06):
The Internet, as wonderful as it is, has become the
world's largest rumor mill, chock full of hoaxes, scams, and
conspiracy theories. What if I just wanted to vent my
rage at whatever? Can I just get out there, piece
of cake? I can go out there and say anything
I want. To take me about ten seconds to make
this live.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
On the Internet. You heard that right. People on the
Internet could say anything, whether it was truthful or not.
The good side of this is that everyone can become
a source. The bad side is that everyone can become
a source. The double edged nature of a free Internet
was clear. The world's information would be at everyone's fingertips.
(21:47):
That included its porn, its bomb instructions, and its outright lies.
But at the end of the day, what you consumed
would still be up to you, at least for now.
By the late nineties, it was obvious just how dependent
we were going to be on the Internet. In a decade,
(22:09):
it had infiltrated almost every aspect of American life. Kids
used it in classrooms, businesses used it for commerce, and
governments used it to run their systems. But as the
twentieth century drew to a close and a new millennium
was on the horizon, the world was going to learn
just how quickly technology could turn against us.
Speaker 20 (22:30):
If you want to, there are plenty of things to
worry about as we approached the end of the twentieth century,
global warming, biological warfare, meteors from outer space, and now
y two K. Y two K is the year two
thousand computer glitch that threatens to crash the world's computer networks.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
One night, I was in my kitchen, I don't know,
straightening something up. I get a phone call. Some random
got kind of high pitched, hysterical, and the first thing
this guy said, stop being listed. People should not know
your name. You're going to be in danger. You know.
(23:19):
I was thinking, this guy's a nutcase. This was the
first call that I got warning me about the end
of the world.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
In nineteen ninety nine, Ellen Olman was a computer programmer
who had published a book about the tech revolution. She
says she was used to getting cold calls from random
men trying to date her but one night she got
a call from a man who was trying to warn
her about a computer glitch that had become known as
the Y two K bug.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
He said, society's going to crack up. It's going to
be wild out there. Everyone's going to be roaming around,
you know, trying to steal other people's stuf. Nothing will work,
no electricity and water won't run. Water Okay, okay, all right.
(24:11):
He was in terror. He said, you have to fix it.
You have to hell everyone to fix it. The world's
got to come to an end. I went on to
tell people, but a different story from the one he
wanted me to tell.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
By the time Olman received that call in nineteen ninety nine,
the Internet age was facing its biggest crisis yet.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
A Senate panel describes Y two K the Year two
thousand computer bug, as a worldwide crisis and one of
the most serious and potentially devastating events this nation has
ever encountered.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
The Y two K or Year two thousand bug, had
been in the offing for years. Back in the nineteen sixties,
computer memory was really limited, precious and expensive to se.
Programmers decided that years in computer code would be represented
with only two numbers instead of four, nineteen sixty five
(25:08):
would just be sixty five. The choice saved millions in
memory costs, but as the millennium approached, it presented a
massive crisis. By nineteen ninety nine, there were hundreds of
millions of computers, but many of them were not able
to recognize the year two thousand. It was thought that
as the world rolled over into the new millennium, critical
(25:31):
systems would malfunction.
Speaker 7 (25:33):
Disastrous shutdowns of telephone systems, the food industry, power and
water banking.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Even nuclear bombs going off on their own could all
plague the world.
Speaker 6 (25:45):
On January first, power.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Grids might be completely knocked out. Planes could fall out
of the sky. I don't want to be anywhere remotely
closed to an airport midnight on Semmer thirty firs. But
the biggest concern was that a new clear weapon might
launch accidentally, or that a radar system might think one
had been launched.
Speaker 12 (26:06):
Russia, like the United States, still keeps thousands of strategic
weapons on hair trigger alert. That's the equivalent of about
one hundred thousand EROSIUMA bombs that could be lobbed around
the planet in under an hour.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
The fix for the y two K bug seemed impossible.
Programmers would have to work around the clock on every
system in the world, scanning billions of lines of code
and updating year dates manually.
Speaker 6 (26:34):
It's an enormous task. More I thought about it, the
more I thought got how is this going to work?
How in the world you're going to do this.
Speaker 10 (26:43):
If we act properly, we won't look back on this
as a headache, sort of the last failed challenge of
the twentieth century. It will be the first challenge of
the twenty first century. Successfully met and together, we can
do it.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
I think a lot of people thought it was a
hoax and nothing would happen. They were just scaring us.
I got scared for a minute. There was one night
I'm sitting alone and I just felt, what's over my shoulder?
Something darkness over my shoulder.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Olmand decided to do what the crazy man on the
phone had told her to do, find out how people
were tackling the Y two K problem and write about it.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
Companies were desperate to find people who knew what this
code was about, and they were calling back all these
old veterans to come in and help them.
Speaker 14 (27:38):
Well.
Speaker 6 (27:38):
I talked to a few programmers. They said, I'm fixing
code I wrote thirty years ago. I didn't think I'd
ever see this code again. They just got to work.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Fixing the Y two K problem would take a massive
effort of coordination and cooperation, an effort that was now
possible because of the Web. Programmers around the world connected online,
sharing software, updates and patches. The rapid sharing of information
allowed companies big and small to prepare their systems for
the new year.
Speaker 20 (28:09):
The process of fixing a single computer program is tedious
and time consuming, and you have to go through them
line by line.
Speaker 12 (28:17):
The year two thousand is approaching at the rate of
three thousand, six hundred seconds per hour.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
While running out of time. With the clock ticking, the
Internet was bringing nations together around the world to collaborate
on the problem. Even the American and Russian governments were
working side by side.
Speaker 17 (28:33):
The Pentagon has spent three and a half billion dollars
fighting the Battle of LY two K, including setting up
a joint missile warning center with the Russians to make
sure a computer glitch doesn't set off false alarms of
an attack.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
But as organizations tested their systems, there were signs that
catastrophe might strike anyway.
Speaker 8 (28:54):
The Peach Bottom Nuclear Facility experienced a serious glitch when
operators tried to fix a why to a problem. Doomsday
sayers are predicting massive blackoutscome January one, two thousand, I.
Speaker 6 (29:08):
Spoke with a programmer at the Federal Reserve. I asked him,
how's it going. Oh, it's fine. We have these techniques,
and I go, oh, that's good. And then he went
on to say, well, almost everyone I know is getting
off the grid. They're buying guns, they're buying camping equipment
because it's all going to be dangerous collapse out there.
(29:30):
I said, how did you get from everything's great to
everything's terrible? He said, well, I think we have everything
well in hand, but I don't know if other people
are in hand. That was the fear that they're in
the darkness, the darkness of the internet. Someone else would
(29:51):
bring it down.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Well, the internet sped up the Y two K overhaul,
also spreading rumors, fear, and misinformation about the crisis.
Speaker 6 (30:05):
There were fear mongers out there scaring everybody. You're gonna
have water problems.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
I'm seeing a rather dark forecast. You're gonna lose half
the population of the planet.
Speaker 17 (30:16):
We're going to be in a world of hurt come January.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
The first two thousand.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Ordered Millennium Fears fact or fiction video for only nineteen
ninety five.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
In the last days of nineteen ninety nine, people all
over the world were preparing to varying degrees. Some were
hoarding food chicken noodle. They've stocked their shelves with soups.
Speaker 8 (30:37):
Kick and noodle more than you'd find in some convenience stores.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Somebody really like chicken noodle. Some people were preparing for
a full societal collapse.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
The biggest sellers are ammunition, gun safs, kerosee lefts, and
water jugs.
Speaker 10 (30:53):
I think there are real risks of panic behavior which
could have a profound impact on our society.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
People out there that are talked to it that said,
there's nothing going to happen.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
What are you basing that on? Nobody knows no For others,
all this Y two K stuff was a warning the
technology was leading society astray.
Speaker 19 (31:13):
It's almost become an idol, like the ten Hours, But
my son stays in front of the computer, so it's
maybe only chess that this idol comes crushing down.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
For the end of nineteen ninety nine, the US government
reported that it had made tremendous progress in fixing the
Y two K bug.
Speaker 18 (31:33):
We do not at the moment expect that this will
be as the websites are calling it, Tia towaki. That's
the acronym for the end of the world as we
know it.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
I am standing at ground zero in case of any
accidental nuclear missile launch.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Behind me, you can see the tunnel entrance to the
command center for NORAD.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
It's December third, nineteen ninety nine, outside the North American
Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs. At nearby Peterson Air
Force Base. Russian and American officers are working together around
the clock.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
You may think you're in Moscow, Yilia cruise. I'll give
you a long is a piece in it, Bud.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Are you confident that there will not be a launch?
Speaker 8 (32:24):
We are very confident in the US forces there will
not be an accidental launch of a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
And how confident are you of the Russian forces.
Speaker 8 (32:35):
I'm very confident that the Russians will not have a
problem either.
Speaker 6 (32:42):
New Year's Eve, Y two K. I gave a party
lives in a loft at the time, and one hundred
people showed up. We got dressed up like it was
nineteenth thirty three. We put on evening gowns. It was
so much fun at this party. I kept the TV on.
(33:03):
I was watching. One place after another entered the year
two thousand.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
The world's eyes turned to New Zealand, the first major
country to ran the new millennium. The orchestra blaired and
the lights stayed.
Speaker 10 (33:24):
On here in New Zealand, not one single major or
for that matter, that we know, a minor white to
k problem.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Back at Norad in Colorado, military officials watched closely as
Moscow prepared to enter the twenty first century.
Speaker 6 (33:43):
It is a dramatic time in Moscow.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
You see red Square celebrating this moment in the less
than twenty seconds now to midnight.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Earlier that day, Russian President Boris Yeltson stepped down, appointing
and acting president.
Speaker 14 (33:56):
Vladimir Putin was Bjeltsin's hand selected prime in and now success.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
As the clock struck midnight in Moscow, in intense reliefs
spread across the room at Norat, But that relief was
short lived.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
We learn from Russia looks like the city of possession.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Radar showed three scud missiles had been launched in southern Russia.
The officers rushed to figure out what had happened and
learned that the Russian military was firing at extremists in Chechnya.
An American general reportedly called Russia and said, this is
not a good time to be launching missiles. People around
(34:37):
the world were reporting in on the internet. There were
no major Y two K issues.
Speaker 17 (34:43):
Four three two one, happy two.
Speaker 6 (34:49):
Every city they go to, all around the globe, nothing happens,
as one time zone after another was still operating. I
got relieve, but I wondered, what's the next one is
that going to go down? And eventually it rolled around
to us in San Francisco and it was over and
(35:11):
nothing happened. We all yelled yay and Happy New Year
and lifted our glasses of champagne, and there was a
sense of relief. It was just like a sense I
think of disappointment. Somehow, no one really wanted to go
(35:34):
home yet, so we went and munched the fireworks on
the roof. A lot of people were crowded up there
and drinking heavily, and was the end of the world.
I'm going to go down drunk. I saw all those
people celebrating it really happy. There was a sense that
(35:54):
we were all in this, The whole world was involved
in this. I thought, good, thank you programmers, thank you,
thank you. Now everyone's happy. At the end of the party,
I was putting away some things that call from that
strange god came to me out of the bloom. We
(36:15):
said that everything's going to collapse and water won't run.
Water turned on the faucet, washed my hands.
Speaker 12 (36:25):
There.
Speaker 6 (36:25):
It was all the water, like all the code it runs.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Disaster had been averted. The billions of dollars and millions
of man hours spent on addressing the crisis had paid off.
But of course there were those who thought that the
whole thing had been a big hoax.
Speaker 14 (36:52):
Some people are questioning now whether all of this was overkill,
whether the problems were that large to begin with. I
just would like to know when you're going to come
by to pick up all that bottled water and beef
jerky that you made me buy.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
I do remember. I just want to say flatly that
it wasn't a hoax. We didn't have a collapse because
there were armies of dedicated programmers. The job they did
was astounding to me.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Why t K is remembered today as a joke, a
punchline for government fear mongering, an overreaction, rather than a
rare moment when people came together to solve a problem.
It's worth imagining if the same thing would even be
possible today, that we could agree on anything, much less
unite in a common cause. But this was a time
(37:38):
before the Internet went sour, and as the sun rose
on a new millennium, the world felt more connected than
ever before.
Speaker 10 (37:48):
Good morning, and happy New Year, or we should say
Happy New Millennium.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
President Bill Clinton gave a New Year's Day address.
Speaker 10 (37:56):
What is perhaps most remarkable about last night's celebration is
the way it was shared all around the world. The
people all over the planet could experience the same events
at the same time would have been impossible for anyone
to imagine a thousand years ago, even one hundred. Yet,
the growing interconnectedness of the world today thanks to technologies
(38:18):
like the Internet, is more than just a mark of
how far we've come. It's the key to understanding where
we're going in this new interconnected world. America clearly must
remain engaged. We must help the shape events and not
be shaped by them. We can make this new century
a time of unprecedented peace, freedom, and prosperity for our
(38:42):
people and for all the citizens.
Speaker 12 (38:44):
Of the world.
Speaker 10 (38:45):
Thank you, Happy New Year, and God bless America.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
At that moment in time, the Internet was a blank canvas.
It would take the shape of us, the people who
used it, for better and for worse.
Speaker 21 (39:03):
It's supposed to be a very transparent medium between the
author and the reader. So if you find that life
is complex on the web, you are reading a complicated
part of it.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
This is Tim berners Lee, the man who invented the
World Wide Web, speaking in an interview in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 21 (39:21):
Analogy is with paper. Can you imagine trying to invent
a sort of paper which can't be used for writing
untruths or can't be used for moral purposes.
Speaker 11 (39:29):
Actually, it's only as good as the world it serves. Yes,
in many parts, that's not very.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Good, is it. In this interview, it's like berners Lee
is staring through a monitor at the future, at our
present day world, where the web has the power to
push us into echo chambers and disrupt our shared sense
of reality. With the web, you can.
Speaker 21 (39:52):
Find a myriad of different websites something really matches your
particular weird view point in life.
Speaker 9 (39:57):
World government, implannable, Mike, crowd chaps, Satanism, it is out.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Of the open Bible.
Speaker 21 (40:04):
And then you can filter your emails that you only
communicate with people who also share that weird view that
you can get into a sort of cult.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
These are the same people that are trafficking children. I
did my own research and I found out.
Speaker 21 (40:16):
With this truly looking you can get into a sort
of cultural pothole with a few crazy fanatics.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
They can't climb out of it.
Speaker 21 (40:24):
They can't understand anybody who's not in it, and they
bump into somebody else on the street. The only form
of communication that is left to shooting.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
The Welsh fired at least one round into the restaurant
floor with an AR fifteen rifle. Welch read online that
the comat restaurant was harboring child sex slaves.
Speaker 11 (40:44):
Do you think in some ways that it's the creation
of a monster. It's a profound revolution, isn't it in
terms of technology around the world, and revolutions is sometimes painful.
Speaker 21 (40:54):
They yes, I suppose that there will be aspects of
any change which you're painful.
Speaker 9 (41:03):
Hope in the faith a difficult thing, the audacity of hope.
Speaker 6 (41:09):
In Egypt, Facebook, Twitter, and Google mobilized crowds and sparked
a revolution.
Speaker 5 (41:19):
I believe Facebook's product stoke division and weaken our democracy.
Speaker 17 (41:24):
Trump supporters helped the Russian Internet trolls spreading Russian made messages.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
Misinformation and conspiracy theories are rapidly spreading online.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
QAnon's presence and the mob was unmistakable.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
It all started as an online conspiracy more than four
years ago.
Speaker 17 (41:48):
Google and Twitter and Facebook, they're really treading on very,
very troubled territory. They better be careful.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
This is something that we've never seen before.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
The CEOs of some of the most powerful and wealthy tech,
analogy and media companies in the world seated on the
platform for the inauguration of an American president.
Speaker 6 (42:05):
It's a type of power that the world has never
seen before.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
You're watching the unraveling of our democracy. It's not about
to happen. It is happening right now. That's all coming
up on this season of Long Shadow Breaking the Internet.
Long Shadow is a production of Long Lead distributed by PRX.
(42:34):
The show is produced and co written by Ryan Schwiker.
John Patrick Pullan is Our story editor and executive producer.
Emily Barone is. Long Leads Managing editor. Kevin Sheppard and
Ulla Culpa served as associate producers. Additional editorial support by
Ula Culpa, Audience development by Jensen Rubinstein, fact checking by
(42:56):
Will Degravia. Claire Mullen did the mix. Sound design by
Claire Mullen and Ryan Swikert. John Singh handles publicity for
Long Lead. The Ponglomerate provides publicity, marketing, and promotional support
for the show. Music by Epidemic Sound and Marmoset. Cover
art by Long Leads Creative director Sarah Rogers. Learn more
(43:18):
about Long Lead and subscribe to our newsletter at long
lead dot com. Episode transcripts and more are available at
long Shadow podcast dot com. If you're enjoying the show,
spread the word and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.
It helps others find the show. I'm Garrett Graf, and
thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
If you enjoyed this episode, I'm happy to report there
is plenty more where that came from, including their recent
episode Enragement Equals Engagement. I really like that one. They
talked to a new momo about her experiences confronting vaccine
misinformation and connect it with Facebook's relentless pursuit of engagement
and profit. Be sure to follow long Shadow and Apple
(44:03):
podcasts Spotify, or wherever you're listening Now. Got a story
about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to
say hi, You can reach us at Hello at tangody
dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode
at tengody dot com. There Are No Girls on the
Internet was created by me bridget Tod. It's a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Stricklands our executive producer.
(44:27):
Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado
is our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Tod. If
you want to help us grow, rate and review us
on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. This week,
we're doing something a little bit different instead of our
normal news roundup. I'm so excited to share an episode
of the Peabody Award nominated podcast Long Shadow Breaking the Internet.
(00:29):
This is the first episode of their new season, which
dives into the history of the Internet. Is hosted by
Pulitzer Prize finalist and historian Garrett Graff and charts the
evolution of the Internet from the optimistic days of the
dot com boom to our present moment. It's an ambitious
project produced by Long Lead and distributed by PRX, a
seven part series exploring how choices made by tech companies
(00:50):
and others in those early days shape the Internet into
what it is today. In this specific episode, the first
in a seven part series, you'll travel back in time
to ninety three. Gas is just over a dollar gallon,
the minimum wage is for twenty five an hour. Mass
media is hitting its apex, and American culture seems to
be getting ever more homogeneous, and somewhere in the background
(01:12):
of all of that, this new thing called the World
Wide Web just became available to the general public. Then
y two K threatened to shut it all down forever.
If you liked this episode, be sure to follow Long
Shadow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Now here's the full episode.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
When was the last time you felt good about the Internet?
The online landscape today is a harrowing one. People screaming
at each other on social media, violent videos going viral, cyberbullying, racism, misogyny.
It's hard to say for sure where the Web started
to turn sour, but a case can be made that
(01:55):
the last good day of the Internet was February twenty sixth,
twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
How could we not start with this video to lamas
on the run in Sun City for hours today?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
It goes by that morning people around the country were
huddling around their monitors. A news event was unfolding that
was holding the Internet in a trance.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
The mussy video of the day Llamas on the Lucy
in the Valley.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
They were at an event. A pair of lamas had
escaped from a visit to a nursing home in Sun City, Arizona.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
A man let go of his robe and before we
knew it, it was Lama's Day out here in sun.
Speaker 6 (02:30):
City, so we're double choppering the two Lamas for the day.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
We've learned some helicopter crews documented the chase as the
Lama's dodged handlers.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Oh Lama, Lama's head button that is not good.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And wove in and out of oncoming traffic.
Speaker 6 (02:45):
This is crazy.
Speaker 7 (02:46):
It would be really neat to be in those cars
on the streets with the Lamas.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Online, the incident was going viral under the hashtag Lama drama.
Speaker 7 (02:57):
The entire Internet, my office included, was just obsessed with
these escaping Lamas in Arizona.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Kate's Holderness and her colleagues at BuzzFeed were watching the
Lama drama from their office in New York and.
Speaker 7 (03:10):
There was like helicopter footage and news coverage and it
was just hours of everyone being like, Oh, are they
going to catch the Lamas.
Speaker 8 (03:18):
They do have a couple of guys with lasses around there,
but they've tried to throw these things.
Speaker 6 (03:22):
Oh yeah, they got it with one.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
The Lama's finally caught and headed back to their trailers.
Speaker 7 (03:29):
They finally didn't catch the lamas.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Believe it or not watching Lama videos was a big
part of Holderness's job at BuzzFeed, trying to predict what
would go viral and how to capitalize on it. At
the time, BuzzFeed was the king of viral content, with
two hundred million visitors a month.
Speaker 7 (03:52):
We had the attitude of if a piece of content
makes you feel something, you should post it.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And towards the end of that day, as the Lama
drama was dying down, Holderness got a message on BuzzFeed's
Tumblr account.
Speaker 7 (04:08):
Hey, Buzzby, can you look at this thing that I posted?
My friends and I are losing it. We're freaking out,
and I was just like, I don't see what the
big deal is. It's a blue and black dress. I
leaned over to two of my colleagues who were sitting
beside me, and I was just like, hey, guys, what
color is this? And at the exact same time, one
of them said white and gold and one of them
(04:29):
said blue and black.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Her colleagues were looking at the same picture of a
dress and seeing completely different colors.
Speaker 7 (04:38):
They immediately started debating with each other.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Their argument drew people in from the rest of the office.
Speaker 7 (04:45):
Within ten minutes, there were twenty people standing behind my
desk just screaming at each other. Just couldn't believe people
were seeing a different colors. I was like, if we're
fighting about it, maybe the rest of the inner will
fight about it. So I threw it up into a
BuzzFeed post, hit publish, and then left work. Didn't really
(05:08):
think much about it until I got off of the subway.
My phone kept crashing. I couldn't load Twitter, and I
had dozens of text messages from friends and colleagues and
family members saying, you're ruining our lives, Like, what did
you do? I looked on Twitter at that point, I
(05:31):
had like several thousand notifications and everyone was freaking out,
just like the entire Internet was freaking out. It started
making the rounds through New York media.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
Well it's black and blue or gold and white, and
has us debating all over.
Speaker 6 (05:46):
It's golden white, blue and black, yellow and white for sure.
Speaker 9 (05:50):
Well, my wife says it's blue and white.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
And then it just spiraled from there. Taylor Swift is
tweeting about it now, Kim Kardashian tweeting about it. It
was just it was absolutely surreal. Most of the people
who voted in the poll voted white and gold, which
just as bonkers to me because I've never been able
to see a white and gold.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
The dress would go on to become one of the
most viral means to ever break the Internet. It drew
everyone in from the sidelines in a mostly fun battle
over the very nature of our shared reality.
Speaker 7 (06:26):
I think it went viral because people just love fighting
over low stakes things.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
At the time, it wasn't clear why the dress became
such a viral phenomenon. We didn't know it, but the
Internet landscape was shifting beneath our feet. It wasn't about
keeping up with what your friends and family were doing anymore.
It was about feeding you content you would click on,
and social media companies knew that what people really engaged
with was content that was controversial, content that was device,
(07:01):
even things that were supposed to be fun, like the
dress or sparking heated arguments, and as a result, the
Internet was getting angrier.
Speaker 7 (07:12):
The number of posts that I saw of people like
using wildly aggressive language, you know, not only towards me,
but it's awards other people calling people just the worst
names and the worst slurs. I should not have gotten
death threats and rape threats for posting.
Speaker 6 (07:31):
A picture of a dress.
Speaker 7 (07:33):
It's like, really, guys, it's a picture of a dress.
It's not that deep.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
The dress was right there on the crest of a
powerful wave. It was both a symbol of harmless Internet
fun and also a sign of division to come.
Speaker 7 (07:52):
It's a metaphor for the fact that people can approach
an objective fact and be so f are divided in
how they view and interpret that fact.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
It's been ten years since the dress, and today the
Internet is in a state of turmoil. The line between
online and off is increasingly blurred. Fights over the nature
of our realities seem to rage every day, but now
the stakes of those fights are higher than ever, and
we're left to wonder what went wrong.
Speaker 7 (08:26):
I think a lot went wrong. I think a whole
lot went wrong. The Internet we have in twenty twenty
five is fractured.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
How did we get here to the moment we're in
right now? With the Internet, a tool designed to give
everyone access to all the world's information, has become a
fire hose of lies, hoaxes, and conspiracies.
Speaker 10 (08:51):
The anti vaccination movement is growing due to a new
wave of conspiracy theories chared through social media.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
The force vaccinating or children.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Websites that brought friends together have also become rallying points
for hate groups and hotbeds of extremism.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
The in cells are part of a larger online group
that's been called the Mana Sphere.
Speaker 6 (09:11):
Their frustration festering online can turn violent.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
But it wasn't always like this. The Internet also gave
power to the people, and it helped to topple autocracies.
Speaker 11 (09:23):
Opposition activists organize them off on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
That online energy could actually be converted into on the
street action.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
In this season of Long Shadow, we're going to chart
the evolution of the Internet from the optimistic days of
the dot com boom to our present moment, a time
when the Internet is at the heart of so many
of our problems. The story of the Internet is also
a story of greed. The world's richest companies used algorithms
to monetize attention and maximize profit, algorithms that have changed
(09:56):
the way that we interact with each other online and
offa flying.
Speaker 6 (10:00):
The short term dopamine driven feedback loops that we have
created are destroying how society works.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Along the way, we became the product and the target,
and we learned that the Internet could be turned against us.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
It's the protesters. He've gone on trial.
Speaker 7 (10:18):
People were being imprisoned and held indefinitely because what they
posted on social media.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And used by adversaries abroad to try to destroy America
from within.
Speaker 12 (10:28):
The Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United
States undermine public confidence and democracy.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
How did a tool offering so much knowledge drive us
into an existential debate over our shared reality.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
We're living in a post fact world with fake news,
echo chambers and deep distrust of media.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
How did a tool with the potential to lift all
voices end up amplifying the very worst of them.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
The result is a system that amplifies division, extremism, and polarization.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
How did a tool with the ability to fuel democracy
become a weapon aimed at the very heart of it.
Speaker 11 (11:08):
There is an alignment of interests that runs through Silicon
Valley to what is now a coming autocracy.
Speaker 6 (11:18):
It's a coupe.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
This is the story of mankind's greatest invention. It's also
the story of the biggest crisis facing society today. My
name is Garrett Graff from Long Lead and pr X.
This is Long Shadow Breaking the Internet. Episode one the
(11:42):
end of the world as we know it.
Speaker 13 (11:46):
Imagine a world where every word ever written, every picture
of a painted, and every film ever shot could be
viewed instantly in your home. It sounds pretty grand, but
in fact that's already happening on something called the Internet.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
The year is nineteen ninety three, gas is just over
a dollar a gallon, minimum wage is four twenty five
an hour. Mass media is hitting its apex, and American
culture is about as homogeneous as it's ever been. Everyone
is listening to the new Whitney Houston song on their walkman.
Ninety million people are tuning in to watch OPRAH interview
(12:24):
Michael Jackson.
Speaker 13 (12:25):
What did the he he thinks?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
And there's one movie everyone has to see.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
In theaters, Jurassic Park. Hold on your books.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
But somewhere in the background of all that, this new
thing called the World Wide Web just became available to
the general public. For decades, up until now, the Internet
has been a thing used by computer nerds, scientists, and
the military. But the World Wide Web is meant to
be used by anyone and everyone.
Speaker 13 (12:58):
You can do more and just send messages on the Internet.
There's loads of useful information in here. You can get news, recipes.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
And the world Wide Web is better looking. It even
has pictures on it, and.
Speaker 6 (13:09):
I found this satellite weather map in there.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
The web is still brand new, and only a select
few seem to understand what it's good for. What about
this Internet thing? You do you know anything about that? Sure?
Speaker 6 (13:21):
What the hell is that?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Exactly?
Speaker 10 (13:23):
Well?
Speaker 6 (13:23):
What do you write to it?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Like mail?
Speaker 10 (13:25):
Alison?
Speaker 14 (13:26):
Can you explain what internet is?
Speaker 6 (13:28):
That's wild? What's going on?
Speaker 3 (13:29):
You can send electronic mail to people.
Speaker 6 (13:31):
It is the big new thing.
Speaker 9 (13:38):
I mean when I heard about it, I definitely wanted
to try it out.
Speaker 15 (13:42):
You know.
Speaker 9 (13:43):
I had this dial up line and we used it
to download the Worldwide Web.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
This is Stephen Levy. He's been writing about the Internet
for publications like Wired for four decades, but his interest
in the subject really took off when the World Wide
Web came out nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 9 (14:02):
It was pretty easy to use. It was incredibly slow,
and I would spend hours and hours sitting in my
little office waiting for the pages to load. There were
so few websites that every day you would learn which
websites came on. There will only be a handful. Here's
a website about Elvis here's a website about the grateful dead.
(14:22):
Here's a website about medicine or politics or whatever.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Even in its quirky infancy, the World Wide Web was
tearing down the barriers of communication. Suddenly, through email, instant
message and chat rooms, people all over the world could
communicate in one big, open forum. And the crazy part
is that back then online conversations were pretty civil.
Speaker 16 (14:46):
There's an interesting kind of restraint that you find. I mean,
there's not a lot of cursing or swearing. One would
think if you're anonymous, you do anything you want. But
people have their own sense of community and what we
can do.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And the content was pretty tame too.
Speaker 9 (15:03):
There was this one site in Cambridge, England. The people
in their computer department had a coffee room and they
put a camera on the coffee pot and they put
it on the web and people all over the world
could check the status of the coffee pot and I
would check in like three or four times a day.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
It's hard to explain now how being able to connect
to a live stream of a coffee pot in another
country felt revolutionary, But people like Levy knew that if
you could access that from the comfort of your own home,
one day you were going to be able to access everything.
Speaker 9 (15:42):
A lot of the people who were the philosophers of
the Internet preached an idea that information should flow as
freely as possible. This is something that's going to democratize everything.
It's going to level the playing field, and big institutions
will have to face competition from the little guy everywhere.
(16:02):
Citizen journalists could spring up and come up with their
own publications. Governments would lose power as people could share
information and spread it. People thought it was going to
topple authocracies, so it was an exuberant time where people
celebrated the potential of the Internet. I definitely felt that
(16:25):
it was going to be a democratizing force.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
The Internet was going to change the game. But in
nineteen ninety three it only had about fourteen million users.
By nineteen ninety four, twenty five million people had locked on,
many of them through services like compu Serve, Prodigy, and
America Online. The Web was still so small all of
its sites could fit in a book called The Atlas
(16:51):
to the World Wide Web, but it was starting to
become a household name.
Speaker 7 (16:56):
Internet is that assa computer network, the one that's becoming
really big now.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
The Internet's founders believed in its democratic power, but its
real potential was in commerce. In nineteen ninety four, Pizza
Hut became one of the first companies to sell something online,
a large pepperoni and mushroom with extra cheese.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
Anyone warned some pizza.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
It didn't take long for big companies to see the appeal.
By nineteen ninety six, there were forty million people surfing
the Internet, spending more than half a billion dollars a
year on online shopping. Who are you? I'm Jeff Bezos.
What is your claim to say?
Speaker 6 (17:37):
I'm the founder of Amazon dot com.
Speaker 9 (17:40):
When Amazon appeared unbelievable, the bookstore with a catalog with everything.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
As the revenues of companies like Amazon sword and people
logged onto the Internet by the millions, it sparked a
feeding frenzy of investors willing to buy into dot com
companies at any price. They dumped obscene amounts of money
into Webster. You either don't remember or have never heard of.
Speaker 17 (18:03):
Oh they've got it, you fro What crazy dot com like?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Pets dot Com, a pet supply company with a dog
sock puppet as a spokesman.
Speaker 17 (18:11):
Squeaky toys or new collars leeches.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Even that company was valued at almost three hundred million dollars.
The Wall Street training floor was a mosh pit as
a stock market balloon to record highs on the back
of all that dot com speculation. It was perfect. The
Internet was a cash count, but it was also good
(18:37):
for society. It was going to change everything about how
we lived, communicated, shopped, and shared. And in nineteen ninety nine,
with two hundred and eighty million users in growing, there
was nowhere to go.
Speaker 18 (18:50):
But I.
Speaker 19 (18:51):
Can't believe how easy it is to serve the net.
It's so easy to learn and so much fun to
play on serfs up see you on the Net.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
From the beginning, the Internet was just a tool. It
reflected the people who were using it. In the early nineties,
those people were mostly polite nerds, but it's more and
more people piled in. Some of the problems we now
recognize as part of a free and open Internet started
to emerge.
Speaker 15 (19:22):
Two years ago, Elliott pulled the plug when she found
her teenage sons downloading pornography.
Speaker 7 (19:28):
We found sado masochism on our computer, available at the
flick of a button.
Speaker 9 (19:33):
Pornography was something that there was like a big panic
about the idea is that in loving year old kid
is going to see more pornography than a person like
me saw in his entire lifetime.
Speaker 10 (19:44):
Children sometimes are exposed to images parents don't want them
to see because they shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
In nineteen ninety six, President Bill Clinton signed the Communications
Decency Act into law.
Speaker 15 (19:56):
The law makes it a crime to display indecent are
patently offensive words or images on the Internet, but opponents
say the law is patently unconstitutional.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Parts of the law were struck down the following year
for violating the First Amendment right to free speech, but
a debate started that still reaches today. How would we
deliver on the democratic promise of the Internet that speech
and information should be free while also keeping it safe.
The upside of the Internet was that it allowed for
(20:29):
unfettered access to information, but people were starting to learn
that that was also its downside. This man asked to
remain anonymous.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
His fourteen year old son, paid nine dollars and got
the recipe for this pipe bomb from the Internet on
his home computer.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What would happen if volatile information got into the wrong hands.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
By using those computerized directions? This is the results We.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Have enough problems in America without our kids learning how
to become junior terrorists.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
But perhaps the Internet's most obvious and glaring problem was
just starting to dawn on people.
Speaker 6 (21:06):
The Internet, as wonderful as it is, has become the
world's largest rumor mill, chock full of hoaxes, scams, and
conspiracy theories. What if I just wanted to vent my
rage at whatever? Can I just get out there, piece
of cake? I can go out there and say anything
I want. To take me about ten seconds to make
this live.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
On the Internet. You heard that right. People on the
Internet could say anything, whether it was truthful or not.
The good side of this is that everyone can become
a source. The bad side is that everyone can become
a source. The double edged nature of a free Internet
was clear. The world's information would be at everyone's fingertips.
(21:47):
That included its porn, its bomb instructions, and its outright lies.
But at the end of the day, what you consumed
would still be up to you, at least for now.
By the late nineties, it was obvious just how dependent
we were going to be on the Internet. In a decade,
(22:09):
it had infiltrated almost every aspect of American life. Kids
used it in classrooms, businesses used it for commerce, and
governments used it to run their systems. But as the
twentieth century drew to a close and a new millennium
was on the horizon, the world was going to learn
just how quickly technology could turn against us.
Speaker 20 (22:30):
If you want to, there are plenty of things to
worry about as we approached the end of the twentieth century,
global warming, biological warfare, meteors from outer space, and now
y two K. Y two K is the year two
thousand computer glitch that threatens to crash the world's computer networks.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
One night, I was in my kitchen, I don't know,
straightening something up. I get a phone call. Some random
got kind of high pitched, hysterical, and the first thing
this guy said, stop being listed. People should not know
your name. You're going to be in danger. You know.
(23:19):
I was thinking, this guy's a nutcase. This was the
first call that I got warning me about the end
of the world.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
In nineteen ninety nine, Ellen Olman was a computer programmer
who had published a book about the tech revolution. She
says she was used to getting cold calls from random
men trying to date her but one night she got
a call from a man who was trying to warn
her about a computer glitch that had become known as
the Y two K bug.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
He said, society's going to crack up. It's going to
be wild out there. Everyone's going to be roaming around,
you know, trying to steal other people's stuf. Nothing will work,
no electricity and water won't run. Water Okay, okay, all right.
(24:11):
He was in terror. He said, you have to fix it.
You have to hell everyone to fix it. The world's
got to come to an end. I went on to
tell people, but a different story from the one he
wanted me to tell.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
By the time Olman received that call in nineteen ninety nine,
the Internet age was facing its biggest crisis yet.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
A Senate panel describes Y two K the Year two
thousand computer bug, as a worldwide crisis and one of
the most serious and potentially devastating events this nation has
ever encountered.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
The Y two K or Year two thousand bug, had
been in the offing for years. Back in the nineteen sixties,
computer memory was really limited, precious and expensive to se.
Programmers decided that years in computer code would be represented
with only two numbers instead of four, nineteen sixty five
(25:08):
would just be sixty five. The choice saved millions in
memory costs, but as the millennium approached, it presented a
massive crisis. By nineteen ninety nine, there were hundreds of
millions of computers, but many of them were not able
to recognize the year two thousand. It was thought that
as the world rolled over into the new millennium, critical
(25:31):
systems would malfunction.
Speaker 7 (25:33):
Disastrous shutdowns of telephone systems, the food industry, power and
water banking.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Even nuclear bombs going off on their own could all
plague the world.
Speaker 6 (25:45):
On January first, power.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Grids might be completely knocked out. Planes could fall out
of the sky. I don't want to be anywhere remotely
closed to an airport midnight on Semmer thirty firs. But
the biggest concern was that a new clear weapon might
launch accidentally, or that a radar system might think one
had been launched.
Speaker 12 (26:06):
Russia, like the United States, still keeps thousands of strategic
weapons on hair trigger alert. That's the equivalent of about
one hundred thousand EROSIUMA bombs that could be lobbed around
the planet in under an hour.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
The fix for the y two K bug seemed impossible.
Programmers would have to work around the clock on every
system in the world, scanning billions of lines of code
and updating year dates manually.
Speaker 6 (26:34):
It's an enormous task. More I thought about it, the
more I thought got how is this going to work?
How in the world you're going to do this.
Speaker 10 (26:43):
If we act properly, we won't look back on this
as a headache, sort of the last failed challenge of
the twentieth century. It will be the first challenge of
the twenty first century. Successfully met and together, we can
do it.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
I think a lot of people thought it was a
hoax and nothing would happen. They were just scaring us.
I got scared for a minute. There was one night
I'm sitting alone and I just felt, what's over my shoulder?
Something darkness over my shoulder.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Olmand decided to do what the crazy man on the
phone had told her to do, find out how people
were tackling the Y two K problem and write about it.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
Companies were desperate to find people who knew what this
code was about, and they were calling back all these
old veterans to come in and help them.
Speaker 14 (27:38):
Well.
Speaker 6 (27:38):
I talked to a few programmers. They said, I'm fixing
code I wrote thirty years ago. I didn't think I'd
ever see this code again. They just got to work.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Fixing the Y two K problem would take a massive
effort of coordination and cooperation, an effort that was now
possible because of the Web. Programmers around the world connected online,
sharing software, updates and patches. The rapid sharing of information
allowed companies big and small to prepare their systems for
the new year.
Speaker 20 (28:09):
The process of fixing a single computer program is tedious
and time consuming, and you have to go through them
line by line.
Speaker 12 (28:17):
The year two thousand is approaching at the rate of
three thousand, six hundred seconds per hour.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
While running out of time. With the clock ticking, the
Internet was bringing nations together around the world to collaborate
on the problem. Even the American and Russian governments were
working side by side.
Speaker 17 (28:33):
The Pentagon has spent three and a half billion dollars
fighting the Battle of LY two K, including setting up
a joint missile warning center with the Russians to make
sure a computer glitch doesn't set off false alarms of
an attack.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
But as organizations tested their systems, there were signs that
catastrophe might strike anyway.
Speaker 8 (28:54):
The Peach Bottom Nuclear Facility experienced a serious glitch when
operators tried to fix a why to a problem. Doomsday
sayers are predicting massive blackoutscome January one, two thousand, I.
Speaker 6 (29:08):
Spoke with a programmer at the Federal Reserve. I asked him,
how's it going. Oh, it's fine. We have these techniques,
and I go, oh, that's good. And then he went
on to say, well, almost everyone I know is getting
off the grid. They're buying guns, they're buying camping equipment
because it's all going to be dangerous collapse out there.
(29:30):
I said, how did you get from everything's great to
everything's terrible? He said, well, I think we have everything
well in hand, but I don't know if other people
are in hand. That was the fear that they're in
the darkness, the darkness of the internet. Someone else would
(29:51):
bring it down.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Well, the internet sped up the Y two K overhaul,
also spreading rumors, fear, and misinformation about the crisis.
Speaker 6 (30:05):
There were fear mongers out there scaring everybody. You're gonna
have water problems.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
I'm seeing a rather dark forecast. You're gonna lose half
the population of the planet.
Speaker 17 (30:16):
We're going to be in a world of hurt come January.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
The first two thousand.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Ordered Millennium Fears fact or fiction video for only nineteen
ninety five.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
In the last days of nineteen ninety nine, people all
over the world were preparing to varying degrees. Some were
hoarding food chicken noodle. They've stocked their shelves with soups.
Speaker 8 (30:37):
Kick and noodle more than you'd find in some convenience stores.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Somebody really like chicken noodle. Some people were preparing for
a full societal collapse.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
The biggest sellers are ammunition, gun safs, kerosee lefts, and
water jugs.
Speaker 10 (30:53):
I think there are real risks of panic behavior which
could have a profound impact on our society.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
People out there that are talked to it that said,
there's nothing going to happen.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
What are you basing that on? Nobody knows no For others,
all this Y two K stuff was a warning the
technology was leading society astray.
Speaker 19 (31:13):
It's almost become an idol, like the ten Hours, But
my son stays in front of the computer, so it's
maybe only chess that this idol comes crushing down.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
For the end of nineteen ninety nine, the US government
reported that it had made tremendous progress in fixing the
Y two K bug.
Speaker 18 (31:33):
We do not at the moment expect that this will
be as the websites are calling it, Tia towaki. That's
the acronym for the end of the world as we
know it.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
I am standing at ground zero in case of any
accidental nuclear missile launch.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Behind me, you can see the tunnel entrance to the
command center for NORAD.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
It's December third, nineteen ninety nine, outside the North American
Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs. At nearby Peterson Air
Force Base. Russian and American officers are working together around
the clock.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
You may think you're in Moscow, Yilia cruise. I'll give
you a long is a piece in it, Bud.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Are you confident that there will not be a launch?
Speaker 8 (32:24):
We are very confident in the US forces there will
not be an accidental launch of a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
And how confident are you of the Russian forces.
Speaker 8 (32:35):
I'm very confident that the Russians will not have a
problem either.
Speaker 6 (32:42):
New Year's Eve, Y two K. I gave a party
lives in a loft at the time, and one hundred
people showed up. We got dressed up like it was
nineteenth thirty three. We put on evening gowns. It was
so much fun at this party. I kept the TV on.
(33:03):
I was watching. One place after another entered the year
two thousand.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
The world's eyes turned to New Zealand, the first major
country to ran the new millennium. The orchestra blaired and
the lights stayed.
Speaker 10 (33:24):
On here in New Zealand, not one single major or
for that matter, that we know, a minor white to
k problem.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Back at Norad in Colorado, military officials watched closely as
Moscow prepared to enter the twenty first century.
Speaker 6 (33:43):
It is a dramatic time in Moscow.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
You see red Square celebrating this moment in the less
than twenty seconds now to midnight.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Earlier that day, Russian President Boris Yeltson stepped down, appointing
and acting president.
Speaker 14 (33:56):
Vladimir Putin was Bjeltsin's hand selected prime in and now success.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
As the clock struck midnight in Moscow, in intense reliefs
spread across the room at Norat, But that relief was
short lived.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
We learn from Russia looks like the city of possession.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Radar showed three scud missiles had been launched in southern Russia.
The officers rushed to figure out what had happened and
learned that the Russian military was firing at extremists in Chechnya.
An American general reportedly called Russia and said, this is
not a good time to be launching missiles. People around
(34:37):
the world were reporting in on the internet. There were
no major Y two K issues.
Speaker 17 (34:43):
Four three two one, happy two.
Speaker 6 (34:49):
Every city they go to, all around the globe, nothing happens,
as one time zone after another was still operating. I
got relieve, but I wondered, what's the next one is
that going to go down? And eventually it rolled around
to us in San Francisco and it was over and
(35:11):
nothing happened. We all yelled yay and Happy New Year
and lifted our glasses of champagne, and there was a
sense of relief. It was just like a sense I
think of disappointment. Somehow, no one really wanted to go
(35:34):
home yet, so we went and munched the fireworks on
the roof. A lot of people were crowded up there
and drinking heavily, and was the end of the world.
I'm going to go down drunk. I saw all those
people celebrating it really happy. There was a sense that
(35:54):
we were all in this, The whole world was involved
in this. I thought, good, thank you programmers, thank you,
thank you. Now everyone's happy. At the end of the party,
I was putting away some things that call from that
strange god came to me out of the bloom. We
(36:15):
said that everything's going to collapse and water won't run.
Water turned on the faucet, washed my hands.
Speaker 12 (36:25):
There.
Speaker 6 (36:25):
It was all the water, like all the code it runs.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Disaster had been averted. The billions of dollars and millions
of man hours spent on addressing the crisis had paid off.
But of course there were those who thought that the
whole thing had been a big hoax.
Speaker 14 (36:52):
Some people are questioning now whether all of this was overkill,
whether the problems were that large to begin with. I
just would like to know when you're going to come
by to pick up all that bottled water and beef
jerky that you made me buy.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
I do remember. I just want to say flatly that
it wasn't a hoax. We didn't have a collapse because
there were armies of dedicated programmers. The job they did
was astounding to me.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Why t K is remembered today as a joke, a
punchline for government fear mongering, an overreaction, rather than a
rare moment when people came together to solve a problem.
It's worth imagining if the same thing would even be
possible today, that we could agree on anything, much less
unite in a common cause. But this was a time
(37:38):
before the Internet went sour, and as the sun rose
on a new millennium, the world felt more connected than
ever before.
Speaker 10 (37:48):
Good morning, and happy New Year, or we should say
Happy New Millennium.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
President Bill Clinton gave a New Year's Day address.
Speaker 10 (37:56):
What is perhaps most remarkable about last night's celebration is
the way it was shared all around the world. The
people all over the planet could experience the same events
at the same time would have been impossible for anyone
to imagine a thousand years ago, even one hundred. Yet,
the growing interconnectedness of the world today thanks to technologies
(38:18):
like the Internet, is more than just a mark of
how far we've come. It's the key to understanding where
we're going in this new interconnected world. America clearly must
remain engaged. We must help the shape events and not
be shaped by them. We can make this new century
a time of unprecedented peace, freedom, and prosperity for our
(38:42):
people and for all the citizens.
Speaker 12 (38:44):
Of the world.
Speaker 10 (38:45):
Thank you, Happy New Year, and God bless America.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
At that moment in time, the Internet was a blank canvas.
It would take the shape of us, the people who
used it, for better and for worse.
Speaker 21 (39:03):
It's supposed to be a very transparent medium between the
author and the reader. So if you find that life
is complex on the web, you are reading a complicated
part of it.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
This is Tim berners Lee, the man who invented the
World Wide Web, speaking in an interview in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 21 (39:21):
Analogy is with paper. Can you imagine trying to invent
a sort of paper which can't be used for writing
untruths or can't be used for moral purposes.
Speaker 11 (39:29):
Actually, it's only as good as the world it serves. Yes,
in many parts, that's not very.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Good, is it. In this interview, it's like berners Lee
is staring through a monitor at the future, at our
present day world, where the web has the power to
push us into echo chambers and disrupt our shared sense
of reality. With the web, you can.
Speaker 21 (39:52):
Find a myriad of different websites something really matches your
particular weird view point in life.
Speaker 9 (39:57):
World government, implannable, Mike, crowd chaps, Satanism, it is out.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Of the open Bible.
Speaker 21 (40:04):
And then you can filter your emails that you only
communicate with people who also share that weird view that
you can get into a sort of cult.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
These are the same people that are trafficking children. I
did my own research and I found out.
Speaker 21 (40:16):
With this truly looking you can get into a sort
of cultural pothole with a few crazy fanatics.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
They can't climb out of it.
Speaker 21 (40:24):
They can't understand anybody who's not in it, and they
bump into somebody else on the street. The only form
of communication that is left to shooting.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
The Welsh fired at least one round into the restaurant
floor with an AR fifteen rifle. Welch read online that
the comat restaurant was harboring child sex slaves.
Speaker 11 (40:44):
Do you think in some ways that it's the creation
of a monster. It's a profound revolution, isn't it in
terms of technology around the world, and revolutions is sometimes painful.
Speaker 21 (40:54):
They yes, I suppose that there will be aspects of
any change which you're painful.
Speaker 9 (41:03):
Hope in the faith a difficult thing, the audacity of hope.
Speaker 6 (41:09):
In Egypt, Facebook, Twitter, and Google mobilized crowds and sparked
a revolution.
Speaker 5 (41:19):
I believe Facebook's product stoke division and weaken our democracy.
Speaker 17 (41:24):
Trump supporters helped the Russian Internet trolls spreading Russian made messages.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
Misinformation and conspiracy theories are rapidly spreading online.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
QAnon's presence and the mob was unmistakable.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
It all started as an online conspiracy more than four
years ago.
Speaker 17 (41:48):
Google and Twitter and Facebook, they're really treading on very,
very troubled territory. They better be careful.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
This is something that we've never seen before.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
The CEOs of some of the most powerful and wealthy tech,
analogy and media companies in the world seated on the
platform for the inauguration of an American president.
Speaker 6 (42:05):
It's a type of power that the world has never
seen before.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
You're watching the unraveling of our democracy. It's not about
to happen. It is happening right now. That's all coming
up on this season of Long Shadow Breaking the Internet.
Long Shadow is a production of Long Lead distributed by PRX.
(42:34):
The show is produced and co written by Ryan Schwiker.
John Patrick Pullan is Our story editor and executive producer.
Emily Barone is. Long Leads Managing editor. Kevin Sheppard and
Ulla Culpa served as associate producers. Additional editorial support by
Ula Culpa, Audience development by Jensen Rubinstein, fact checking by
(42:56):
Will Degravia. Claire Mullen did the mix. Sound design by
Claire Mullen and Ryan Swikert. John Singh handles publicity for
Long Lead. The Ponglomerate provides publicity, marketing, and promotional support
for the show. Music by Epidemic Sound and Marmoset. Cover
art by Long Leads Creative director Sarah Rogers. Learn more
(43:18):
about Long Lead and subscribe to our newsletter at long
lead dot com. Episode transcripts and more are available at
long Shadow podcast dot com. If you're enjoying the show,
spread the word and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.
It helps others find the show. I'm Garrett Graf, and
thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
If you enjoyed this episode, I'm happy to report there
is plenty more where that came from, including their recent
episode Enragement Equals Engagement. I really like that one. They
talked to a new momo about her experiences confronting vaccine
misinformation and connect it with Facebook's relentless pursuit of engagement
and profit. Be sure to follow long Shadow and Apple
(44:03):
podcasts Spotify, or wherever you're listening Now. Got a story
about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to
say hi, You can reach us at Hello at tangody
dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode
at tengody dot com. There Are No Girls on the
Internet was created by me bridget Tod. It's a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Stricklands our executive producer.
(44:27):
Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado
is our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Tod. If
you want to help us grow, rate and review us
on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
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