Artifacts

Technology is a story of daring optimism. Human ingenuity keeps turning today’s trials into tomorrow’s wonders, carrying us from horse‑drawn carriages to lunar landings, from vacuum tubes to quantum leaps, and from fragile parchment to the world’s knowledge in the palm of a hand. Artifacts is a tribute to that restless spirit. By spotlighting the breakthrough moments that bent the arc of history, the book invites founders, investors, engineers, and builders to imagine—and build—what comes next.

Artifacts distills the catalytic “why‑now” shocks that turned fragile ideas into enduring platforms. Knowing where we came from is the best way to see where we can go. Every category‑defining company traces its roots to one of the moments captured in these pages. This book is a love letter to the breakthroughs of the past century and an ode to the ideas that became timeless.

1965 – 1982: The Semiconductor Era

Gordon Moore predicted that transistor counts would double like clockwork, and computing power exploded. Minicomputers such as the PDP‑8 shrank room‑sized machines. Intel unveiled its first microprocessor, while NASA’s Moon missions showed how far silicon could take us. Transistors opened a gateway and set the stage for truly personal machines.

1990 – 1996: The Personal Computer Era

By the early 1990s, computers had left the lab for the desktop. Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 made intuitive interfaces mainstream. Apple refined the Macintosh, proving that design could be a competitive edge. Chips grew stronger, software more capable, and a computer in every home no longer felt like science fiction. Personal computing became the springboard for a more connected world.

1997 – 2004: The Internet Era

Dial‑up modems squealed and the web became essential. Google surfaced the world’s information, Hotmail and Yahoo! bridged digital divides, and Napster rewrote the music business. The dot‑com boom and bust revealed both promise and peril. Early social networks like Friendster and MySpace set the stage for Facebook, and the sense of a single, sprawling, interlinked network of possibility took hold.

2006 – 2021: The Mobile & Cloud Era

A phone in every pocket expanded human reach beyond physical boundaries. The iPhone combined phone, camera, and computer in one sleek device, igniting an app economy. Android made smartphones accessible worldwide. Cloud services such as AWS and Azure let anyone spin up global infrastructure with a click. Always‑on connectivity reshaped media, commerce, and work, while the cloud quietly carried petabytes of data.

2022 – Present: The Artificial Intelligence Era

Generative AI moved to center stage. Powerful language models began to converse naturally, write code, and solve complex problems. Organizations are weaving these tools into products, workflows, and research, pairing human creativity with machine ingenuity. Recommendation engines guide choices, autonomous systems reshape transport, and personalized diagnostics redefine healthcare. The key question is no longer whether AI will change the world, but how we will guide its trajectory.