Bush: How many do the computer stuff;
How many are computer literate?
Narrator: In 1989,
While a political revolution unfolded right before our eyes...
A tech revolution hid in plain sight.
The military took its secret weapon to new heights.
Reporter (over tv): The network is called the global positioning system.
Narrator: The technology on board, would take life in a new direction.
Parkinson: Certainly when it went into cell phones, the whole world changed.
Narrator: Also in 1989, the new toy kids couldn't put down...
Sullivan: This is called game boy.
Narrator: Helped inspire what none of us can put down.
Jobs: And we are calling it, iphone.
Narrator: But the year's biggest breakthrough.
Reporter (over tv): An online network called internet.
Narrator: Changed everything.
Smith: I don't know that I would still have a career had it not been for the internet.
Narrator: But with these incredible leaps came some unintended consequences.
Reporter (over tv): Google may be tracking your location even if you told the
Company not to.
People who spent the most time on social media, had the highest likelihood
Of feeling socially isolated.
Spitz: People can find like-minded people.
That creates a feeling of community.
The flip side is, do we really know those people?
(theme music plays)
Gumble: Back now 56 past, I wasn't prepared to translate that.
As I was doing that little tease.
That little mark with the "a" and then the ring around it.
Woman: At?
Gumble: See that's what I said.
Katie said she thought it was about.
Couric: Yeah.
Gumble: What is internet anyway?
Couric: Can you explain what internet is?
Gumble: And others can access it.
Narrator: It's hard to imagine a time when something called
The internet was unknown.
Today anyone can use the internet to make a purchase, express an opinion or,
Or look up the definition of epic fail.
But in 1989, only a few had access to this powerful tool.
Spitz: 1989 I was working for a science and technology organization, so yes,
We were aware of the internet,
I don't think that was necessarily typical of the average person.
Ferleger: The internet was closed and it was non-commercial.
It was the government and a bunch of nerds who were communicating with each other.
I don't think anybody had any idea where it would be in this day and age.
Narrator: When the internet began in 1969,
It wasn't even called the internet.
'arpanet' was confined to the military and academics.
But thanks to a british computer scientist, it was about to go mainstream.
In 1989, tim berners-lee first proposed an open network
That would link vast amounts of information together and
Make it all accessible from any computer.
From his jumble of tech jargon, the world wide web was born.
Tim: 1989, and the internet already existed in that you could send email.
But there was no websites, so there was no htp, there was no html,
There was no space or things you could click through.
I imagined a system where you could just click from one to the other,
And that was so compelling that I decided that I wanted to build it.
Spitz: The invention and the development of the browser and then the search engines is
Really what created the ability to connect to all of those information
Sources and sites.
It changed everything.
Smith: I benefited tremendously from the internet.
I don't know that I would still have a career had it not been for the internet,
Because that's where I found my fans.
A friend of mine said, 'you should go to an internet cafe and look at one
Of the clerks websites.'
And, I said, 'what is that?'
And he said, 'it's tough to explain, but there are people who like your movie
So much they build websites around it.
And so, I went to the internet cafe and a website came up.
I'd never seen this before in my entire life, so my first description of
A website was like, it's like a magazine, but it's on television.
It to me, was everything I wanted.
It put you directly in contact with the fanbase.
Affleck: Wish I held on to a little piece of that thing, because the buzz he indicated
That movie is going to make some huge bank.
Mews: What buzz?
Affleck: The internet buzz.
Mews: What the (bleep) is the internet?
Narrator: Of course you didn't need to be a celebrity to love this
New thing called the internet.
At the very least, we no longer had to wait for the morning paper...
Or buy as many stamps.
Man (over computer): You've got mail!
Narrator: But even before most of us discovered this incredible new platform,
The digital frontier was already filled with outlaws.
Rasch: It's natural as people and resources start finding their way onto the internet
That people are gonna start to use that for malicious purposes.
Narrator: And in 1989,
One man became the early face of internet crime when he was
Brought to justice for creating the first computer worm.
Pauley (over tv): Well, government installations and some of the nations most
Prestigious universities are still trying to assess the damage done
To their computer systems.
Reporter (over tv): The virus spread through 6,000 computers in a
Military computer network.
Rasch: I was working on another computer crime case when I got a
Phone call that said, "the internet has gone down.
Someone has shut down the internet."
The person who perpetrated this internet worm was a student named robert morris,
He was a graduate student at cornell university where he was working on a
Graduate degree in computer science.
Mcafee: The computer virus, and I've seen the code,
Was intended to creep slowly across
The arpanet and implant itself innocuously in all these machines.
Rasch: He wanted to find out how the internet worked, and really,
Demonstrate that this kind of thing could be done.
Mcafee: Computer virus technology is a technology that we currently do not have
A full mastery of, as was demonstrated by the virus that bob morris wrote.
Couric: A four year old federal law against computer tampering has
Produced its first conviction.
A jury in syracuse, new york
Returned a verdict of guilty against former graduate student robert morris.
Rasch: What we learned from this worm was that computers lost their innocence.
That was the year we learned that the internet was vulnerable,
That was the year we learned that we had to do something about it.
Narrator: But most of all,
The morris worm previewed the digital dangers of the future.
More time online, meant more exposure to risk.
And the cyber-attacks themselves would only get more sophisticated.
Reporter (over tv): The new indictment claims the russian intelligence officers
Hacked the clinton campaign,
The dnc, and emails of clinton campaign chairman john podesta.
Reporter 2 (over tv): The secret service is investigating a
Major data breach at target.
Reporter 3 (over tv): A devastating hack crippling one of the world's most
Powerful entertainment studios.
Glor: Facebook may have mishandled data from more than 50 million users.
Jones: Are we more vulnerable?
And the answer is yes because we have more stuff online that's more accessible
To more people in ways that we don't understand.
And also, you're not the custodian of that information.
Ferleger: It's a blessing and a curse.
It opens you up to a world of people you didn't know, it's good for business,
It's good for marketing, it's good for communication.
But that led to some unintended consequences.
Narrator: Another hi-tech tool born in 1989 would come with
Unforeseen repercussions.
This one made it impossible for us to get lost...
And impossible for us to hide.
In the 1880s we still rode a horse and buggy...
By the 1980s, we were flying through space.
But in 1989, the us military began to transform every mode of transportation.
Not with a new vehicle,
But a new technology that kept us moving in the fast lane.
Parkinson: I was an inertial navigation guy with the united states air force.
My career intersected something called 621-b, which was a, a floundering
Air force study project,
That was attempting to provide a very, very precise
Positioning system for the world.
Narrator: In 1973, brad parkinson was charged with saving a
Us air force program designed to modernize navigation.
Parkinson: The air force did not want it.
So, the first step was to assemble a concept that made sense,
And then go around and sell it.
The military needed precision weapon delivery.
You could see that the fashion of, of just carpet bombing something,
You may have good intentions.
But if you're hitting synagogues, or churches, or schools, or hospitals,
You're not doing what you should be doing.
We had put the system together, we'd put the satellites up, demonstrated
Pretty good accuracy, now, pretty good,
In this case, is a few meters.
It isn't what you can do today.
The air force tried to cancel it.
They didn't want to spend any money on that.
They thought they were navigating well enough.
Fortunately, there were civil leaders that I had developed a good bond with
Who could see what this would do.
And they told the air force,
"if you don't, I'm gonna cancel a wing of your airplanes."
That's how it was resolved.
Reporter (over tv): This navy f4 on a bombing run in arizona is testing
The air force's new satellite navigation system, navstar.
The system can be used to tell anyone where they are,
Where they're going.
And how soon they'll get there.
It has almost unlimited applications.
Narrator: By the early 80s the navstar program paid off.
The united states had gps technology.
No other nation did.
But that exclusivity would have tragic consequences.
Parkinson: There was an incident during reagan's administration in which an
Airliner crossed the kamchatka peninsula of russia,
Evidently because of a navigation error,
And got shot down.
Everyone died.
Narrator: When the soviets shot down a south korean airliner that had
Accidentally entered its airspace, cold war tensions rose.
Reagan: This crime against humanity must never be forgotten,
Here or throughout the world.
Narrator: But an opportunity for diplomacy emerged.
America's president decided to release the gps technology it had developed to everyone.
Parkinson: Reagan said we're going to give it to the world.
It's our gift to humanity.
Narrator: But reagan's directive wouldn't really take flight
Until the end of the decade,
When the next version of gps would become operational.
Man (over radio): We have liftoff of the first delta ii and navstar
Global positioning system satellite.
Parkinson: There was the launching of a operational satellite that was quite an
Important milestone in February of '89.
And after that we put up a lot of them.
Man (over radio): Liftoff of the 10th delta ii navstar
Global positioning system satellite...
Woman (over radio): The 25th in the mark ii series...
Man (over radio): The gps 2-27 satellite...
Narrator: The world now had a fully formed network of space-age monitors
Soaring above the planet.
An interconnected man-made constellation that mapped and patrolled the
Earth like never before.
And for those in the american military who had once doubted the navstar project,
Gps would quickly prove its worth.
Parkinson: We were anticipating a need called a desert war.
Rather: If it comes to war, iraq will of course,
Have the advantage of fighting on its home territory.
Plus possible advantages in tanks and artillery.
The american answer to that is once again supposed to be superior technology.
A satellite network designed to guide us forces around the vast tractless desert.
Reporter (over tv): The network is called the global positioning system.
Parkinson: It was a great mystery to the iraqis when the americans came around out of
The desert in places the iraqis couldn't navigate.
Narrator: Gps equipment was mounted onto coalition aircraft,
And even vehicles on the ground.
Man: We were able to attack targets very discreetly.
We did not carpet bomb downtown baghdad.
We took special care to make sure we attacked only military targets and
We attacked them quite precisely.
Parkinson: And all of a sudden the technology of space craft,
Space oriented navigation was appreciated.
Narrator: Frozen concentrate...
Duct tape...
The jeep...
Like many of the military's greatest hits, gps ultimately wound up in the hands
Of the rest of us...
Showing up in cars in the mid 90s, and in 1999 the first commercially
Available gps phone was introduced in europe.
A flood of gps-enabled mobile phones quickly followed.
Parkinson: Certainly when it went into cell phones, oh, the whole world changed.
Reporter (over tv): 50 million drivers across the us now use waze to avoid traffic.
Reporter 2 (over tv): Uber, it's the app that lets you order a car on demand.
Reporter 3 (over tv): Google is about to launch the first self-driving taxi service.
Parkinson: It is suddenly ubiquitous and simultaneously stealthy.
As a result you suddenly found all these applications that you never knew of before.
The reason it's a revolution is it's free, and it does so many things
For so many people.
It's used for scientific purposes, farming, construction, airplanes.
There's all kinds of things.
But there's an issue of privacy with gps that is pretty profound.
There are issues of using it to guide bad things.
To track a citizen of the united states without his consent.
But compare that to the 61 billion dollars of direct economic value,
Not including safety of life or safety of air flight or any of those things.
Oh sure, yeah, it's a slam dunk.
Narrator: So how did our cell phones end up with gps,
The internet, and so many other things that have
Nothing to do with making calls?
One of 1989's most popular toys helped pave the way for the all-in-one mobile device.
Smith: This thing is addicting.
Rogers: Having a portable device that you can take with you anywhere,
Play on the train, play on the bus, that revolutionized gaming.
We grow up and we stop playing games, we start doing other things,
But the device is still there, it's just gotten way better.
And not exactly mobile,
But they were becoming commonplace outside the office,
And their days as clunky, over-priced calculators were numbered.
Spitz: The thing that did happen in the late 80s of course
Is the personal computer.
The microprocessor was developed and packaged into a size that could be
Brought into the home.
Narrator: And while we didn't go from a commodore 64 on our desk
To an iphone 10 in our hand overnight,
The path to portability began in 1989, when we started taking a
Child's toy with us...
Wherever we went.
Jones: The game boy itself was the first, multi-use, by that you can change games,
You can do other things, handheld personal device that anyone had.
Rogers: Once the game boy came out you no longer had to go home or to your friend's house
To play a game, you could just play a game anywhere you wanted to play.
Narrator: But for game boy to be a game changer, it needed more than just good hardware,
And video game designer henk rogers was about to stumble on that one thing
That would turn game boy into a phenomenon.
Rogers: I traveled around the world looking for games through all the trade shows,
Including the consumer electronic show in las vegas,
Where I found tetris.
So in 1989 as the year begins we had just started publishing tetris
On personal computer platforms.
Tetris is a game that could be played by anybody.
People who don't play games are all playing this game.
Game boy came out in japan and nintendo was trying to figure out when and
How to launch it in the u.S.
I went to visit the president of nintendo of america, mr. Arakawa, and I said,
"mr. Arakawa, you know, you're probably thinking to include some game with game boy.
Tetris is the perfect game."
And on a handshake, we made a deal.
I mean, that revolutionized gaming.
Announcer: Now you can have all the power and excitement of
Nintendo right in the palm of your hand.
Introducing game boy!
Narrator: Game boy, bundled with tetris made it's us debut in the summer of 1989,
And was an instant smash.
Man: On gameboy, when you're dealing with 1.5 million units in the matter of a few months,
Obviously you have a phenomenon starting there.
Announcer: It's going to be a nintendo christmas.
Narrator: Like the vcr and the walkman before it, the game boy had turned an
Entire industry on its head.
How we played games, and where we played them would never be the same.
Rasch: You know, when you think about a desktop in 1989, you'd have a rolodex,
A typewriter, cassette recorder, telephone, stereo system,
All that would sit on your desk.
Now all of that fits in your pocket.
Ferleger: The game boy opening up the doors to a more portable world
Was making things exciting and easier for everybody around.
Narrator: So once arcades started fitting in our pockets, other magical
Electronic bricks wouldn't be far off.
By the early 90s we had digital notepads and laptops.
And soon everything, from cameras to stereos became must-have digital companions
Like the game boy.
Until someone decided, maybe we had one too many portable gadgets.
Jobs: An ipod, a phone, and an internet communicator.
And we are calling it, iphone.
Narrator: The original iphone was a game-changer for almost every industry,
And it turned apple into one of the world's most valuable companies.
And it wasn't long before gaming, gps, and of course the internet would come
Standard on every mobile devic.
All of 1989's tech marvels bundled together, forever.
Jones: Miniaturization, personalization, and mobility and connectedness are the
Things we all now expect.
Narrator: Today, we depend on these digital companions for everything.
And the irony is we're connected to the entire world, but often,
We're not paying attention to it.
Blitzer: There is the picture.
During the three and a half hour hearing at one point you were playing a
Little poker on your iphone.
Ferleger: It's just sad this human interaction is being depleted.
It's the most connected we've ever been, but I would also argue that it's the most
Disconnected we've ever been.
Smith: You could point to how technology has isolated us more
From one another in real time.
It has given dark pockets to people who function in the shadows.
It's created esteem issues in a generation of children who can't feel good about
Themselves unless a bunch of strangers hit a little like and tell them they're okay.
So yeah there's a downside.
Good side though is, everybody's in touch.
Spitz: The fact that people can find like-minded people
Creates a feeling of community
And can eliminate the feeling of aloneness in a way that's pretty powerful.
Of course, the flip side is, do we really know those people and how does that actually
Affect us in terms of our interpersonal and psychological development?
And I don't know the answers to that.
What I do know is that it's not going to change.
That the pace of technology change has been on an exponential curve
Since the beginning of time and it's not slowing down.
So, like it or not, we are hurdling into this future and it's important that
We understand it.
Rogers: We're losing that little bit of personal communication, but what we're
Gaining is collective consciousness.
If I have a question I'll post it on facebook and I'll get answers from
All around the planet.
If everybody has the power to be able to find whatever they need to find,
That's a good thing for the human race and for the future of humanity.
Captioned by cotter captioning services.