If we can count on one thing to always remain constant… it is… change! Whether we’re talking about politics, the environment, culture or technology, the longer you’re alive the more you realize that nothing stays the same for very long.
Since we are celebrating our tenth anniversary here at ALIVE Magazine, we thought it might be fun to take a stroll down memory lane a bit and recall what was happening just ten years ago…
So, let’s begin by taking a look at your iPhone in 2005—oh wait, the “smartphone” won’t be invented for another two and half years—when Apple would introduce the first generation iPhone on June 9, 2007. No, if you were into cutting edge technology in 2005 you were probably carrying a Motorola RAZR (because it was one of the first phones to have a built-in megapixel camera). And if you weren’t riding the crest of the tech wave, you were probably carrying one of the other top-selling “flip phones” made by Nokia or Sony, as Apple was only in the planning stages of its hand-held device hegemony.
If you were the savvy business person in 2005 looking for the latest tech leg up on your competition, you certainly had laptop running Windows XP and a Blackberry personal digital assistant (PDA), although if you wanted internet access you needed a place to connect by Ethernet or DSL because WiFi was, pretty-much, brand-new technology that existed just about… nowhere. And even if you could plug in, the connections were so slow it was really a chore to be avoided if possible.
Transferring and saving data changed in 2005 with the invention of a new device called a “flash drive,” replacing the floppy for good and making the cd something mainly used only for music. And speaking of music, while Apple did come up with the iPod way back in 2001, it wasn’t until 2004-2005 that the device started to really catch on because up until then it was only Mac compatible and flash memory wasn’t part of iPod technology yet.
Hybrid vehicles had been around for a while already in 2005 but were still pretty much a novelty, as the world was first introduced to the Airbus 380, the XBox 360, and the F-22 Raptor that same year.
In 2005, Google had only moved out of a garage some seven years earlier and would not surpass Yahoo as the “search” leader until the following year, 2006. Its webmail service, Gmail, was still in beta status, available by “invitation” only. Invites to the program were so coveted they sold on ebay for upwards of $150. Regular “Joes” (the general public) could not use Gmail until February 7, 2007. Also thanks to Google, the task of finding your way around had the hope of becoming easier in 2005 because that’s the year they introduced Google Earth global mapping.
Text messaging (texting) existed but only in what could best be described as in a primitive form, and it certainly wasn’t the ubiquitous means of communication it is today. And no one was “streaming” anything on their tablets yet because Youtube had just been invented (February 2005) and tablets wouldn’t exist for another five years with introduction of the iPad on April 3, 2010.
And what was your social media profile like in 2005? Believe it or not, Myspace was still the most visited social networking site in the world that year. It wasn’t until April 2008 that Facebook (launched in 2004) became Ruler of the social media universe. And Twitter wouldn’t exist for another year until its launch in 2006.
Of course there was a lot more happening in 2005 besides changes in technology. Hurricane Katrina struck the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama leaving a path of devastation and a death toll upwards of 1,800, becoming one of the worst disasters in U.S. history.
President George W. Bush started his second term, British Prime Minister Tony Blair began his third, Lance Armstrong won a record seventh straight Tours de France, and Steve Fossett broke a world record with the first non-stop, non-refueled, solo flight around the world in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer. Oh yes, and the New England Patriots won 24-21 over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX.
The world lost some amazing people in 2005, including Pope John Paul II, Rosa Parks, Arthur Miller and Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. We also said goodbye to Johnny Carson, Peter Jennings, Ann Bancroft, Richard Pryor, Luther Vandross, Sandra Dee, Eugene McCarthy, Bob Denver (Gilligan), and James Doohan (Scotty), among others.
It was a year of some landmark legal battles, too. Michael Jackson was found not guilty of child molestation charges; the United States Supreme Court ruled that medicinal marijuana users can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws, and the courts ordered a feeding tube removed from Terri Schiavo, ending her life after a contentious, eight year legal battle between her husband and her parents.Saddam Hussein was tried and convicted in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.
On the lighter side, Star Wars: Episode III –Revenge of the Sith premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, but Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the 4th film based on the books by J. K. Rowling went on to become the most successful film of the year, earning almost 900 million. Other popular films that year included War of the Worlds, Batman Begins, Hitch, Crash, Brokeback Mountain, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Madagascar.
So there you have it—a little snapshot of life way, way back in 2005. Hey, this was so much fun, let’s do it again in 2025!
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