It's difficult to remember a time when online media wasn't arranged largely around memetic cultural events. On any given April 20th in recent years, for instance, you can find all sorts of weed-themed stories pegged around the unofficial holiday for marijuana. That's not so in 1999: a search for "420" brings up precious few results.

Instead, the science and technology news of late April included one big company shake-up, some odd developments in space, and an extremely doomed game studio founded by Michael Crichton. Here's this week in tech, 20 years ago.

Read the full story at The Verge.

The year is 1999. Microsoft, accused of using its market power to strangle web browser company Netscape, is still embroiled in an antitrust lawsuit. The first sections of the International Space Station have entered orbit. Companies and governments alike are working to fix the Year 2000 Bug, which threatens to crash computers across the world. And email is maybe ruining the English language. Welcome to a new year of This Week in Tech, 20 Years Ago.

This February, we'll be following how the internet transformed writing, music, and revenge - plus stories about spy satellites and dances with computers.

Read the full story at The Verge.

We're heading into the last days of 2018, and by extension, the last days of our look back at 1998 - where the dot-com bubble was steadily inflating, cyberspace was transforming everything from crime to horoscopes, and the end of the internet (or maybe civilization itself) was just a year away with Y2K. And that means one thing in the media world: time for some retrospectives!

I'll be deviating slightly from the normal format by accepting a few pieces from both earlier in December and later in January, so I can offer a spread of analysis looking back at the year.

Read the full story at The Verge.

There is surprisingly little news about technology and the 1998 World Cup.

The 2018 World Cup wraps up this weekend, and we've had lots to say about it - from how streaming video has made watching the games more convenient (unless it completely screws up) to how World Cup memes have made it all the way into Amazon's Alexa. But in 1998… well, apparently it was the first year that officials used electronic displays during games. There were also a number of World Cup video games, including a ridiculous-looking Japanese arcade game and the first FIFA World Cup game from EA Sports - but these came out during the pre-Cup hype period, not the even …

Read the full story at The Verge.

As a person who covers day-to-day technology news, I often wonder how my writing might come off to someone in the future - and whether anyone will even be reading it. I can't answer those questions, but I can do the next best thing: look back at what other people were writing 20 years ago.

Here are five stories - big and small - that science and tech enthusiasts might have checked out during the week before May 12th, 1998.

Say hello to iMac

If you follow tech news, you might already know that Apple's colorful original iMac turned 20 years old last weekend. You can find some modern perspectives on it in a Twitter moment, an Engadget retrospe …

Read the full story at The Verge.