Chapter 1
The millennium bug and tech optimism
Chapter 2
Metallic fashion and futuristic style
Chapter 3
Music videos and the MTV era
Chapter 4
Handheld gadgets and virtual pets
YOUR GOAL
Master of Y2K culture and aesthetics
Ch 1 · The millennium bug and tech optimism
sonia Ever wonder where the term Y2K came from? Explore this infographic to discover how a programmer in 1995 coined the famous millennium bug shorthand.
sonia The Millennium Bug
They said the screens would fade to black (no way!) / But we patched the code and never looked back (yeah, yeah!)
sonia The late 1990s aesthetic was defined by a utopian hope for the upcoming digital age.
sonia Apple's release of the iMac G3 in 1998 sparked a massive design trend of colorful, see-through plastics.
Fun Fact
Y2K bug cost: Countries spent over $300 billion globally to fix the Y2K computer bug before the millennium arrived.
Glossary
millennium bug (noun)
A computer glitch caused by storing calendar dates using only the last two digits of a year. Global investments to fix the bug before January 1, 2000, fueled a massive technology boom.
A computer glitch caused by storing calendar dates using only the last two digits of a year. Global investments to fix the bug before January 1, 2000, fueled a massive technology boom.
Quiz
Which website hosting service, acquired by Yahoo! in 1999, allowed users to build personal pages with animated GIFs?
Quiz
What did early web designers use to track how many people visited their GeoCities pages?