Computer / Internet Culture Timeline Outline

Possibly the Earliest Reference to a Fictional Device that Resembles a Modern Computer
(1726)

"Without being Worked out by Human Head & Hands. . ."
(July 10, 1843)

"As We May Think"
(July 1945)

The First Use of "Bug" in the Context of Computing
(September 9, 1945)

Cybernetics: The First Widely Distributed Book on Electronic Computing
(1948)

The First Popular Book on Electronic Computers
(1949)

The Turing Test
(1950)

UNIVAC Predicts the Election of Dwight D. Eisenhower
(November 4, 1952)

Perhaps the First Computer-Controlled Aesthetic System
(1953)

Alan Turing Dies
(June 7, 1954)

Satirizing the Role of Automation in Eliminating Jobs, and Librarians
(1957)

First Formal Definition of Hacker
(June 1959)

The PDP-1: Programmed Data Processor, Not Called a Computer
(December 1959)

Technical Basis for the Development of Phreaking
(November 1960)

"Dial F for Frankenstein"
(1961)

Coining the Term "Computer Science"
(1961)

Spacewar, the First Computer Game for a Commercially Available Computer
(1962)

First Use of the Term "Hacker" in the Context of Computing
(November 20, 1963)

Email Begins
(1965)

Origin of the Concept of Technological Singularity
(1965)

Possibly the First Personal Computer Club
(1966)

"2001: A Space Odyssey"
(1968)

The First Book on Computer Music to Include Recordings of Compositions
(1969)

The First Message Sent Over the ARPANET
(October 29, 1969)

Xerox PARC is Founded
(1970)

Phreaker Underground Telephone System Culture
(1971)

The First Computer Virus
(1971)

The @ in Email
(March 1971)

The Earliest Coin-Operated Computer or Video Game
(September 1971)

The First Commercially Sold Coin-Operated Video Game
(November 1971)

SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums
(December 7, 1972)

Probably the World's First Online Community
(1973)

The First Public Computerized Bulletin Board System
(1973)

Invention of the Word "Internet"
(Circa 1973)

The First Networked 3D Multi-User First Person Shooter Game
(1973 – 1974)

The Term "Mainframe"
(1974)

Manifesto of the Microcomputer Revolution
(1974)

Byte Magazine
(1975)

The First Computer Text Adventure Game
(1975 – 1976)

The Warez Scene
(Circa 1975)

"The Mythical Man-Month"
(1975)

Home Pong
(1975)

The Utah Teapot
(1975)

The First Personal Computer Offered for Sale
(January 1975)

The Homebrew Computer Club Holds its First Meeting
(March 1975)

The First Journal on Software for Personal Computers
(January 1976)

Probably the First Personal Computer Conference
(March 1976)

Foundation of Apple Computer and the Origin of the Name
(April 1, 1976 – December 13, 2011)

The Apple I is Released
(July 1976)

First Multi-Player Computer Games
(1977)

Zork
(1977 – 1979)

The First Intentional Spam
(May 1, 1977)

The First Dial-UP CBBS
(February 16, 1978)

The First Graphical Computer Adventure Game
(1979 – 1980)

Origins of the Computer History Museum
(September 1979)

Pac-Man is Introduced
(May 22, 1980)

The First Computer Virus Spread by Floppy Disk
(1982)

William Gibson Coins the Word Cyberspace
(July 1982)

Origins of the Smiley on the Internet
(September 19, 1982)

Free Software
(September 23, 1983)

Cyberpunk Coined
(November 1983)

Coining the Term Computer Virus
(November 10, 1983)

Cyberspace
(1984)

2600: The Hacker Quarterly
(1984)

Perhaps the first Underground "Ezine"
(June 1984)

Avatar in the Context of Online Representation of a User
(1985)

Nintendo's Super Mario Bros.
(1985)

The GNU Manifesto
(March 1985)

The First Registered Internet Domain
(March 15, 1985)

One of the First Online Communities
(April 1, 1985)

The Free Software Foundation
(October 4, 1985)

Cyberpunk
(1986)

First PC Virus Epidemic
(January 1986)

The Hacker Manifesto
(January 8, 1986)

Boing-Boing
(1988)

An Internet-Based Hypertext System
(March 1989)

Berners-Lee Plans the World Wide Web
(November 12, 1990)

The First Web Page
(November 13, 1990)

The First Web Browser and Web Server
(December 25, 1990)

The First Webcam
(1991)

First Release of the First Web Browser
(March 1991)

The Gopher Protocol
(September 1991)

The First Web Server in North America
(December 12, 1991)

The First Image Posted to the Web
(1992)

Visions of a Metaverse
(June 1992)

The Web's First and Longest Continuously Running Blog
(1993)

The Singularity
(January 1993)

Wired 1.01
(March 1993)

The First Commercial Website with the First Online Advertising
(May 1993)

From Webspace to Cyberspace
(1994)

FishCam: The Oldest Nearly Continuously Operational Webcam
(1994)

One of the Earliest Guided Tours of the Web
(January 1994)

The First Internet Cafe
(March 12 – March 13, 1994)

Whitehouse.gov
(October 1994)

PlayStation
(December 3, 1994)

The First Wiki
(March 25, 1995)

The Beginning of the "Dot-Com Bubble"
(August 9, 1995)

The First Television Show Broadcast over the Internet
(November 23, 1995)

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
(1996)

First Recorded Use of the Term, Phishing
(January 2, 1996)

The First Full-Time Online Webcam Girl
(April 1996 – 2003)

IBM Deep Blue Defeats Gary Kasparov
(May 11, 1997)

The Cluetrain Manifesto
(1998)

"You've Got Mail"
(1998)

The Matrix
(1999)

Nigerian Letter Scams Move to the Internet
(1999)

Napster is Founded
(June 1, 1999)

Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
(November 29, 1999)

Xbox
(November 15, 2001)

Minority Report
(2002)

Machinima
(2002)

Second Life is Launched
(2003)

Grand Text Auto
(May 2003 – May 2009)

MySpace is Founded
(August 2003)

Facebook
(February 4, 2004)

Over 102 Million Units Shipped
(March 31, 2005)

The First Video is Uploaded to YouTube
(April 23, 2005)

AOL Buys The Huffington Post
(May 9, 2005 – February 7, 2011)

Wikimania!
(August 4 – August 8, 2005)

The Million Dollar Homepage
(August 25, 2005 – January 11, 2006)

The Highest Price Paid for a Domain Name
(January 16, 2006)

"The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time"
(February 2, 2006)

On the Origins of the ENIAC
(February 14, 2006)

The Most Viewed Video on YouTube as of 2009
(April 2006 – May 9, 2009)

Will it Blend?
(October 2006)

"Anshe Chung Becomes First Virtual World Millionaire"
(November 26, 2006)

"An Uncensorable System for Mass Document Leaking"
(December 2006)

First Reported Case of ZZZ-Mailing
(December 15, 2008)

Kickstarter.com is Launched
(April 28, 2009)

The Sociology of Wikipedians
(March 2010)

"The Data-Driven Life"
(April 20, 2010)

Facebook has 500,000,000 Users.
(July 21, 2010)

Wikileaks Installs an "Insurance File"
(July 29, 2010)

The 2010 Social Networking "World Map"
(August 5, 2010)

"The Social Network"
(October 1, 2010)

Towards a New Digital Legal Information Environment
(November 9, 2010)

The Wikileaks U. S. Diplomatic Cables Leak
(November 28 – December 8, 2010)

The Website of MasterCard is Hacked by Wikileaks Supporters
(December 8, 2010)

Facebook is the Most Searched for and Most Visited Website in America
(December 29, 2010)

Google's Track of its Own Development
(2011)

The Smartphone Becomes the CPU of the Laptop
(January 2011)

The Wikipedia Celebrates its Tenth Anniversary
(January 15, 2011)

Leading British Tabloid Closed Because of Cell Phone Hacking Scandal
(July 7 – July 17, 2011)

Michael Hart, Father of eBooks & Founder of Project Gutenberg, Dies
(September 6, 2011)

Steve Jobs Dies
(October 5, 2011)

The Anatomy of an Internet Attack by "Anonymous"
(2012)

On the Twentieth Anniversary CERN Restores the First Website
(April 30, 2013)