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The National Mall has flooded with pink, as demonstrators descend on the nation's capital Saturday for the Women's March on Washington. Just one day after President Trump's inauguration, marchers from across the country have gathered in the city to protest his agenda and support for women's rights.

The event opened with a rally, to be followed by the march proper - which had a path laid out from a starting position near the U.S. Capitol to its endpoint near the Washington Monument.

The city's metro system reported 275,000 rides as of 11 a.m. According to metro officials that's eight times more than a normal Saturday. Reuters adds that the number is also "82,000 more than the 193,000 rides reported at the same point on Friday," the day of Trump's inauguration.

In fact, the number of marchers swelled to the point of prompting reports there would be no space for a formal procession - a claim rebutted by organizers Saturday afternoon in a statement.

"We are marching," reads the statement. "We are marching straight ahead toward the Washington Monument to the ellipse of the White House."

The event grew from humble origins - a simple Facebook invitation after Election Day - to the much more massive demonstration seen Saturday. By the time marchers hit the streets, the Women's March on Washington developed a broad platform of progressive political positions, a slate of celebrity performers and a series of sister marches planned across the world - on all seven continents.

For protester Amy Jackson, though, the matter was simple: She just wanted to "make her voice heard," she tells NPR's Marisa Penaloza. Jackson, who traveled to D.C. from Chocowinity, N.C., to be part of the march, said, "It was very important to be here today."

The Scene On The Ground

Among the crowd that gathered for the rally outside the National Museum of the American Indian, NPR's Sarah McCammon reported signs supporting a wide array of causes - from women's rights and LGBTQ rights, to Black Lives Matter and excoriations of xenophobia.

One thing seemed to be almost universal, though: The pink knitted caps known as "pussyhats" among the marchers, in protest of Trump's past comments about women.

Popular as they may have been, the pussyhats were not the only costume worn by marchers. Others wore their causes on their sleeves, dressing in attire to call attention to issues like Native rights and environmental fears.

In video Sarah recorded a block or two from the main rally, it appears there were marchers in a menagerie of outfits.

Meanwhile, at a nearby metro station, NPR's Pam Fessler reported the mood among the demonstrators has been more festive than protests Friday. Most of the demonstrators are women, Pam says, but some men have joined the march, as well - including one man carrying a sign reading: "This is what a feminist looks like."

From the main rally stage, musicians and speakers addressed the crowd in an event that lasted some five hours - more than two hours longer than anticipated. The reason for that overflow was partly its smattering of surprise guests. Beyond the planned performances and speeches from figures like Janelle Monáe and Gloria Steinem, others including Madonna and Alicia Keys took the stage.

"It was woman that gave you Dr Martin Luther King Jr. It was woman who gave you Malcolm X. And according to the bible, it was a woman who gave you Jesus," Monáe told the crowd, according to The Guardian.

The Road To The March

What began simply as opposition to Trump has developed a wide-ranging list of demands, which organizers published as a platform prior to the march.

But above all, organizers say, is the principle that "Women's Rights are Human Rights and Human Rights are Women's Rights." That statement is pulled directly from a speech Hillary Clinton delivered more than two decades ago in Beijing.

Clinton tweeted her support for the march Saturday, expressing thanks "for standing, speaking & marching for our values."

Arriving at that platform was not always a smooth process, though. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports there has been disagreement between organizers about how to treat issues of race.

"This march was initially put together by white women, and a lot of women of color felt they weren't part of the conversation," Carmen Perez, one of the march's national organizers, told NPR's Hansi Lo Wang. "We can't continue to work in isolation. We can't continue to be one-dimensional. We have to make sure that we look up, that we begin to really coordinate our efforts."

Ultimately, more than 200 organizations - ranging from Planned Parenthood and the NAACP, to Amnesty International and the AFL-CIO - partnered with the Women's March on Washington.

For Darcy Sawatzki, a demonstrator attending the march with her daughter, Delia, what matters most is showing up.

"I think showing up and paying attention is sort of one of the bare minimums of citizenship," Sawatzki told NPR's Brakkton Booker. It's not her first march; she has also participated in Black Lives Matter protests.

She said it's not unease with the new president that inspired her to march.

"I'm not here out of anger or fear, I'm out here for determination, for participation and hope that together we can make a difference."

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Women's March Floods Washington, Sparking Rallies Worldwide

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Less than a day after President Trump's inauguration, protesters are taking to the streets to oppose his policies. Between a rally and a march, they aim to call attention to a broad list of demands.

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Approximately 250,000 people participated in the 1963 civil rights march in Washington, DC, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House, where they discussed the need for a strong civil rights bill. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were enacted after the march.

Between 500,000 and 600,000 people demonstrated against the Vietnam War, which had led to thousands of deaths by 1969. Coalitions started organizing smaller rallies in 1967, eventually leading up to the large anti-Vietnam march two years later.

The Solidarity Day march was a rally of about 260,000 people in DC in 1981. It was sparked by President Ronald Reagan's decision to fire 12,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike and demanded wage increases and safer working conditions.

Between 800,000 and a million people marched on the National Mall in 1993 for LGBTQ rights. The organizers' primary demands were civil rights bills against discrimination, an increase in AIDS research funding, and reproductive rights.

In 1997, two years after the Million Man March, anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million people convened for the Million Woman March. The event, which was held on a rainy Saturday in 1997, included prayer, musical performances, and speeches by local organizers and civil rights activists.

As a protest to George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, between 10 to 15 million people marched in 600 cities across the world in 2003. At least 500,000 people protested in American cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, and Seattle.

It's known as the biggest protest in world history.

The March for Science was held on Earth Day and attracted more than a million protesters around the world.

Participants advocated for a global focus on the International Panel on Climate Change's report on the catastrophic effects of a 1.5 degree Celsius increase in global temperature. Many also protested the Trump administration's budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The 2017 Women's March is considered the largest single-day protest in US history, attracting anywhere from 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. The 2018 Women's March attracted between 1.6 million and 2.5 million.

However, even for its gargantuan size, the Women's March has been criticized as having accomplished little more than visibility.

Tens of thousands of people have protested against police brutality and the systemic racism that contributed to the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and many others.

The protests have been some of the most intense in US history. As Business Insider's Insider Today explained, "Floyd's murder was a tragic horror. The fact that it was captured on video compelled all Americans to face that horror directly. Black Americans saw themselves or their loved ones in that video. In that and other videos, many white Americans finally saw the racism, brutality, unfairness, and fear black Americans have had to live with forever."

More: Features BI Innovation History Protests

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14 of the biggest marches and protests in American history

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Approximately 250,000 people participated in the 1963 civil rights march in Washington, DC, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B.

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Women's March, demonstrations held throughout the world on January 21, 2017, to support gender equality, civil rights, and other issues that were expected to face challenges under newly inaugurated U.S. Pres. Donald Trump. The march was initially scheduled to be held only in Washington, D.C., but "sister marches" arose throughout the United States and numerous other countries. According to some estimates, as many as 4.6 million people attended the various events in the United States, and it was widely believed to be the largest single-day demonstration in that country's history.

The idea for the Women's March arose after Republican Trump defeated his Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 presidential election; in addition, Republicans gained control of Congress on election day. During the campaign, Trump attracted much attention for his conservative political views as well as for his inflammatory remarks, a number of which were about women. Notably, a hot-mic video from 2005 surfaced in which he told an entertainment reporter that "when you're a star...you can do anything," including grabbing women by the genitals. The day after Trump's election win on November 8, 2016, Teresa Shook, a grandmother living in Hawaii, went on Facebook to propose a march on Washington, D.C. The suggestion quickly gained traction as thousands voiced support for the endeavour. In addition, marches were soon scheduled for other cities. While widely seen as an anti-Trump protest, organizers framed the events as a call for social change. Their mission statement expressed support for gender and pay equality, LGBTQ and civil rights, affordable health care, environmental awareness, and reproductive freedom, among other issues that were seen as having a lack of support within the incoming administration.

The demonstrations were held on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump's inauguration. The turnout far exceeded expectations. According to organizers, more than 670 events were held on seven continents. Although estimates varied, it was believed that between 3.3 million and 4.6 million people attended the marches in the United States, while total worldwide participation was reported to be about 5 million. The central demonstration in Washington, D.C., swelled to approximately 500,000 people, which was thought to be double the attendance of the presidential inaugural celebration. Other large marches included those in New York City (about 400,000 people), Boston (175,000), Chicago (250,000), Seattle (120,000-175,000), and Los Angeles (500,000-750,000). Many of the demonstrators, regardless of gender, donned knitted pink "pussyhats," a reference to Trump's comment about groping women.

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Women's March | Definition, Attendance, & Facts

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Women's March, demonstrations held throughout the world on January 21, 2017, that supported gender and racial equality, among other issues. According to estimates, as many as 4.6 million people attended the various events in the U.S., and it was widely believed to be the largest single-day demonstration in that country's history.

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The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a global phenomenon that raised millions of dollars and changed the fight against ALS forever.

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Als Poems - Modern Award-winning Als Poetry : All Poetry

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Poems about Als at the world's largest poetry site. Ranked poetry on Als, by famous & modern poets. Learn how to write a poem about Als and share it!

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The Ice Bucket Challenge involves daring a person to dump a bucket of ice water over their head within the next 24 hours, or else donate money toward fighting ALS. Even if a person completes the challenge, they're more than welcome to donate money too.

Once a person completes the challenge, they're also supposed to dare several other people - usually three - to participate, which is why the challenge has been growing and growing. We've collected a ton of our favorite Ice Bucket Challenges for you to watch right here.

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The best Ice Bucket Challenge videos from the rich and famous

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The Ice Bucket Challenge involves daring a person to dump a bucket of ice water over their head within the next 24 hours, or else donate money toward fighting ALS. Even if a person completes the...

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The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has quickly gone from a fundraising campaign to a viral Internet sensation, raising $15.6 million so far for the ALS Association to research Lou Gehrig’s disease.

But how did a campaign that has drawn in celebrities from Oprah and LeBron James to Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg actually start?

Chris Kennedy, a golfer in Sarasota, Fla., was nominated by a friend to participate in the Ice Bucket Challenge, which at the time, had nothing to do with ALS. The campaign was not tied to any specific charity, and participants would select a charity of their choice for donations. Kennedy’s friend had selected a charity that benefits a young child with cancer in the area. Kennedy, passing the challenge along, then selected ALS because a relative is suffering from the disease. Kennedy nominated his wife’s cousin Jeanette Senerchia, whose husband Anthony is the one suffering from ALS. Kennedy posted this video on July 15—what appears to be the first instance in which the Ice Bucket Challenge and ALS were linked.

“My cousin Chris sent me a message telling me to check my Facebook,” Jeanette Senerchia told TIME. “He nominated me as a joke because we bust each other’s chops. I was just going to donate money.” Instead, Senerchia, not to be outdone by Kennedy, accepted the challenge and posted the video on her Facebook page on July 16, nominating more people. In the beginning, they used the hashtags #takingiceforantsenerchiajr and #StrikeOutALS to support a newly-formed non profit and baseball tournament to honor Anthony.

Senerchia said their town of Pelham, N.Y., is small and the challenge started to spread like wildfire among everyone including their families and even high school friends. Soon, they couldn’t keep track of the number of videos. Eventually, it reached another man with ALS, Pat Quinn from Yonkers, N.Y. Quinn and Senerchia had a couple of mutual Facebook friends, and the campaign had spread to his online community. Quinn was diagnosed with ALS in March 2013.

Eventually, Quinn’s social network connected with Pete Frates in Boston, who has an especially large network of supporters, and is very involved with the ALS community. Frates was diagnosed a year before Quinn, and since the two had a lot in common (Frates was a former captain of the Boston College baseball team and professional baseball player in Europe) Frates has become a friend and mentor to Quinn. “Pete has been a mentor to Pat because he is a year ahead of him in progression,” said Nancy Frates, Pete’s mother.

When asked how Pete Frates gained such a large following, Nancy says, “If you met Pete you would know.” Frates has maintained friendships with people he’s met throughout his life, and they’ve all become part of his support network. Frates posted his own video on Facebook on July 31, using both the hashtags #StrikeOutALS and #Quinnforthewin—and that’s when the campaign really went viral.

The ALS Association says it started seeing an unexplained uptick in donations on July 29, and on Aug. 4, it was clear something was really taking off. The organization said Monday that it’s received more than $15 million from existing donors and 307,598 new donors. Nancy Frates said her family has received emails from other smaller ALS groups who have said their donations are also up. “Everyone is being made aware of this disease and the reality of it,” Frates said.

“What started out as a small gesture to put a smile on Anthony’s face and bring some awareness to this terrible disease has turned into a national phenomenon and it is something we never could have dreamed of,” Kennedy said.

Contact us at letters@time.com.

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Here's How the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Actually Started

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More than $15 million later, looking back at the origins of a viral sensation

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If you think back to 2014, you might remember videos scattered across your social media feeds showing your friends standing out in their yards waiting and smiling nervously for the cold shock that was about to hit them.

After your friend spoke a bit and made a pledge to donate money to the ALS Association, a massive bucket of ice water was poured on their head, drenching them as they tried to shake off the cold. And whether it was before or after, each video included a challenge to another friend to do the same thing.

That's how almost every ALS Ice Bucket Challenge went - and while it might have seemed that it was just a social media trend, it actually did make a huge difference in the world of ALS research.

The ALS Association said that $2.2 million of funds that were raised from the Ice Bucket Challenge went into funding the development and trial of the new drug that the Food and Drug Administration approved this week for treatment of ALS, which is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

"We thank the millions of people who donated, participated, and enabled us to invest in promising therapies like AMX0035 that will immediately help people living with ALS," said Calaneet Balas, president and CEO of the ALS Association. "This is a victory for the entire ALS community, which came together to advocate for early approval" of the treatment.

The new drug is not a cure for the fatal neurodegenerative disease, but it does slow down the effects. Balas said funding from the challenge has "dramatically accelerated the fight against ALS."

The drug approved recently by the FDA is not the only one benefiting from the challenge. More than $115 million was raised from the trend, and the ALS Association said it is funding 130 research projects in 12 different countries, as well as 40 potential treatments that are in development.

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The Ice Bucket Challenge wasn't just for social media. It helped fund a new ALS drug

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In 2014, it was hard to miss the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that set out to raise money to fund research for the disease. And it paid off. A new treatment was funded by $2.2 million of the funds raised.

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How the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge made a lasting impact

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The 9-year-old viral social media movement’s success continues to be felt today: new gene discoveries, more treatment options, and improved care. Researchers say they’re closer than ever to finding a cure for the disease.

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Asterisk (Short 2016) | Short, Drama, Sport

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McCann, Michael; Keith, Ted

Sports Illustrated, 2017, Vol 126, Issue 15, p13

0038-822X

Periodical

See if it's available through your library.

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McCann, Michael; Keith, Ted Sports Illustrated, 2017, Vol 126, Issue 15, p13 0038-822X Periodical See if it's available through your library. Find your institution Not finding what you're looking for? Your source for trusted research content

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Performance-enhancing drugs. | Salem Press Encyclopedia of Science | EBSCOhost

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Number of sports doping cases in North America 2000-2010 | Statista

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This graph shows the number of sports doping cases in North America from 2000 to 2010.

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Doping in Sports Timeline

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Doping in Sports: LEADING ISSUE

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A total of 133 Olympic medals (42 gold, 43 silver and 48 bronze) have been retroactively stripped from athletes for a variety of offences at the Summer Games. Most* of these offences were related to doping, usually where banned substances were found in urine samples, but also where athletes tampered with these samples or failed to provide a valid sample on time (and a small number of non-doping related offences). The death of Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen during the Team Time Trial in 1960 led to the formation of an Olympic medical committee in 1961; this committee then introduced drug testing at the Summer Olympics in 1968. The first athlete to have a medal rescinded as a result of these tests was Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall in 1968; the Swede had two beers to calm his nerves before a shooting event, but had inadvertently consumed an illegal amount of alcohol. Since then, a number of other athletes (or their horses) have accidentally or unknowingly taken banned substances, but evidence suggests that a great deal more have done so intentionally. The first high-profile athlete to be stripped of their medal was Canada's Ben Johnson, following his victory in the 100m sprint in 1988. The scandal rocked the world of sport, was covered heavily by international news outlets, and increased public awareness of the use of steroids in top-level sports.

BALCO and Team USA in 2000

Athletes representing the U.S. have been stripped of ten medals in total, with seven of these coming in the 2000 Games in Sydney; five of these were from one athlete. A 2002 federal investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative found that the lab was providing many professional and Olympic athletes with prohibited substances. When investigators were anonymously provided with a syringe containing unknown substances, this allowed them to trace the materials back to other athletes' samples, who were speedily implicated and charged. The anonymous whistleblower turned out to be the running coach of Marion Jones, who took gold in the 100m, 200m, and 4x400m, and bronze in the Long Jump and 4x100m in Sydney. The investigation did not immediately incriminate Jones, further testing led to her admission of guilt in 2007, and she subsequently turned over her five Olympic medals. Although Jones had won two of her medals in team events, her co-competitors had their medals restored to them in 2010 as the rules in 2000 did not punish teams for the actions of one member. This ruling also benefitted the men's 4x400 team, who had been stripped of their medals in 2004 for the actions of one of the runners in the heats and semi-finals. The men's team's records and medals were restored the following year, but the team was then re-stripped of their medals in 2008 when another member (who ran in the final) also admitted to doping. The seventh medal was stripped from Lance Armstrong, who won the bronze in Individual Time Trial; Armstrong returned his medal in 2013, following the development of the largest doping scandal relating to any individual athlete.

Russian doping scandal

While the Soviet Union and Eastern European states had a history of state-sponsored doping programs throughout the 1970s and 1980s, their doping methods were usually one step ahead of the testing methods, and were difficult to prove (in the past twenty years these countries have had more medals stripped than the rest of the world combined). WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, was formed in 1999 by the IOC, and is the world's leading organization in the fight against doping in sports. Their actions in the past two decades have led to large improvements in testing methods and regulations, and they have helped to identify many cheats throughout this time. In spite of this, it was not until Russian whistleblowers came forward in the early 2010s that the largest doping scandal in the world came to light.

Starting in 2010, a small number of athletes and testing officials reported that RUSADA (the Russian Anti-Doping Agency) was deliberately working against WADA to help athletes cheat and conceal this from testing authorities. The allegations implicated many renowned athletes and high-ranking testing officials, and even indicated that President Vladimir Putin was aware of these activities. In the wake of these revelations and WADA's investigations, 145 Russian athletes have been added to the "most suspicious" list, and have been banned from taking part in any major athletics tournaments. Since 2010, Russian athletes have been stripped of more medals than any other country, 29 medals were stripped from Russian competitors relating to the 2008 and 2012 games alone. In December 2019, WADA announced that RUSADA were still non-compliant with international procedures and regulations, and Russia would be banned from all major sporting events for a period of four years. WADA did, however, allow Russian athletes to participate in the Tokyo Games provided they had been individually cleared by WADA and represented the Russian Olympic Committee, and not Russia.

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Summer Olympics: stripped medals by country 1968-2020 | Statista

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A total of 133 Olympic medals (42 gold, 43 silver and 48 bronze) have been retroactively stripped from athletes for a variety of offences at the Summer Games.

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I.O.C. Strips Gold From 2000 U.S. Relay Team (Published 2008)

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A sprinter admitted using performance-enhancing drugs at the 2000 Sydney Games, costing the team its medals.

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Timeline: Lance Armstrong, from icon to exile

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Lance Armstrong was, at one point, one of the most revered athletes in the world. He faced cancer and inspired millions. He won and tried to dodge doping allegations before his past finally caught up to him.

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Puberty, hormones and emotions, new schools, evolving friendships: Growing up is hard for everyone, but it can be especially hard for queer kids and teens whose understanding of their gender and romantic identities is evolving. One great way to support young people through these transformative years? Share media with them that reflects their own triumphs, struggles, and lived experiences. The movies and TV shows on this list feature prominent, affirming stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth coming of age and navigating life. Before you go, check out our other suggestions for books featuring LGBTQ+ youth, or movies and TV shows that explore intersectionality and queer identities.

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Growing Up Queer: Thoughtful Movies and TV Shows About LGBTQ+ Youth

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Common Sense Media editors help you choose Growing Up Queer: Thoughtful Movies and TV Shows About LGBTQ+ Youth. Excellent picks that uplift the stories of LGBTQ+ kids and teens.

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The First Amendment protects five freedoms, including freedom of speech. Free speech protects the words we say and other forms of expression like music. Music has long been used by people to express themselves and, sometimes, to protest. That's where these modern protest songs come in.

Protest songs can be powerful critiques against society and politics or uplifting anthems. From gospel hymns of the Civil Rights Movement to folk anthems of the Vietnam War era to the popular music of today, music can power movements for change.

These modern protest songs are some of the most powerful, controversial and talked about pieces of protest music since 2000.
Editor's note: Several of these songs feature explicit lyrics.
28 modern protest songs you need to know
1. American Skin (41 Shots) | Bruce Springsteen, 2001
Springsteen has said that this song raising awareness of the death of 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo at the hands of New York police (who were acquitted) was not anti-police. But it did spark protests and criticism when "The Boss" performed at Madison Square Garden. Springsteen wasn't new to protest songs , and this piece has been covered and performed after other deaths in police custody.

This 1971 protest song originally by Marvin Gaye in reaction to violence against anti-Vietnam War protestors has been covered many times to show dismay about social and political conditions. An album with nine versions released in October 2001 was originally intended to raise money for programs addressing HIV and AIDS. It became even more timely after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when proceeds were sent to related funds.

After criticism of violent political imagery in the original music video of Madonna's anti-war/celebrity culture critique coincided with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the artist released a toned-down version. The original "director's cut" video was released in April 2023 for the album's 20th anniversary.

"I feel lucky to be an American citizen for many reasons - one of which is the right to express myself freely, especially in my work. ... As an artist, I hope that this provokes thought and dialogue. I don't expect everyone to agree with my point of view." -

The country trio faced serious backlash, including being blacklisted from country radio and at least one credible death threat, after criticizing President George W. Bush and the Iraq war during a concert in London . This response track became one of the group's biggest successes as they refused to "shut up and sing;" it was also parodied by MADtv . The backlash and comeback both scared and emboldened other artists , and the group has gone on to make more modern protest songs .

Young's music had previously included politically aware songs , but this was more a more direct and literal protest song , both in its lyrics about President George W. Bush and in its aggressive, repetitive tune - so much so that "Saturday Night Live" parodied the album. Reactions fell largely along political lines.

Fun fact: A similarly titled by The Honey Drippers, "Impeach the President," criticized President Richard Nixon.

This gay anthem was inspired by "I Was Born This Way," a 1977 song by Black disco singer, AIDS activist and Archbishop Carl Bean. Gaga's song was criticized as , and simplistic, and was in Muslim-majority Malaysia. But the iconic modern protest song was commercially successful and has had lasting impact among LGBTQ+ communities.

"I want to write my freedom record." -

This commentary on racial inequality compared the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement with present-day issues. It originally appeared in the 2014 film "Selma," about the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., and won for best original song at the Academy Awards , where the duo performed this modern protest song live.

According to the artist, "Alright" was inspired by "The Color Purple" and a visit to activist Nelson Mandela's prison cell in South Africa. The hopeful, uplifting tone and message makes this different from many modern protest songs . It was performed at the 2022 Super Bowl LVI halftime show, and the chorus became a chant at some Black Lives Matter protests.

This empowerment anthem channeled Black female positivity and was used by protestors during the Black Lives Matter movement and the January 2017 Women's March. Beyoncé's Super Bowl Halftime performance drew criticism as anti-police and anti-American, with a protest against her at the NFL's headquarters and dueling hashtags: #BoycottBeyonce and #IStandWithBeyonce. "Lemonade," the album that features the song, has become the subject of academic study .

Beyoncé's "Formation" named greatest music video of all time by @RollingStone. pic.twitter.com/oCFlfcYZTy
- TIDAL (@TIDAL) July 30, 2021

This hip hop track's title refers to an explicit lyric about then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. According to YG, the Secret Service tried to prevent the release of the song, and controversial lines referencing assassination were . The music video shoot , a protest scene, was shut down by police. At an October 2019 show, YG removed an audience member who did not repeat the title lyric.

The group's first song in 18 years premiered just after Election Day 2016. It combines fiery commentary on hatred, fear and bigotry with a hopeful look at the possibility of equality . It references but does not directly name then-newly elected President Donald Trump, whose policies on immigration from majority Muslim nations were felt personally by two Muslim members of the group.

Actor and artist Donald Glover, performing under a stage name, released this hip hop/trap track as a portrait of contradictions of Black life in America and a on racism and violence. The after it was critical commentary music video featured symbolism including references to racist Jim Crow caricatures and to the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, S.C. The video generated controversy shown in a high school class in California.

Though its release was unrelated, "This is America" came out soon after "Ye vs. The People" by Ye (formerly Kanye West) and was used by some as a counterpoint to that song's messages.

Latin trap music artist Bad Bunny was inspired to co-write this song with gay icon Ricky Martin after being refused service at a nail salon . "Caro," which translates to "expensive," is a commentary on gender norms, toxic masculinity and LGBTQ+ equality. It adds gender identity to the topics of modern protest songs .

Grammy Award nominations for this modern protest song made Beyoncé the most nominated and most awarded artist to date in several categories. Its message of support for Black culture, history and activism was both critical and uplifting. Its surprise release on Juneteenth featured references to West African culture and religion , Black hair, leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, and the effects of COVID-19 and police brutality on Black Americans.

Also released around Juneteenth, this reflective, lyrical commentary on gun violence also referenced COVID-19 restrictions and crackdowns on public protests . Inspired in part by his own participation in protests, this modern protest song touches on longstanding generational trauma. The imagery in the video, directed by longtime Kendrick Lamar collaborator Dave Meyers, features people wearing surgical masks and evokes Southern lunch counters.

According to a , the words "I can't breathe" have been used by more than 70 people who later died in police custody. H.E.R. said she felt a responsibility to carry on the legacies of past protest singers like Marvin Gaye and Nina Simone with this critical commentary but was surprised at the impact of this Grammy Award-winning Song of the Year.

The country trio previously known as "The Dixie Chicks" released this call to action at the same time it dropped the reference to the pre-emancipation South. is a that touches on Inspired by the 2018 March for Our Lives , this protest song for women artists who have been politically vocal. call to unite for social justice women's rights, gun violence and more. After the group's comeback following controversy over anti-Bush statements, some have seen this song as vindication

The Dixie Chicks have changed their name to "The Chicks" and released the new protest song "March March" https://t.co/2T500MgqmP pic.twitter.com/Lg6eMjAyVp
- Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) June 25, 2020

The ." It is a Los Angeles Times called this a " quiet cry of Black fury inspired by Kendrick Lamar and Marvin Gaye. Artists Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper and Terrance Martin have commented on feeling a deeper responsibility for artists to speak to the issues of the day. Martin also expressed cynicism about music's impact today after peers didn't speak up after the song was released; a poignant, painful but hopeful look at violence harder-hitting piece from Martin, Washington and Denzel Curry, "Pig Feet," was a more direct and overt protest song .

"It's a protest album but also not, you can listen to it and not feel like you're watching the news." ― Robert Glasper

Sisters Camille and Haley Harris released their show of support for then-President Donald Trump in advance of a rally for him in Tulsa, Okla., where they live. The viral song urges listeners to vote and to focus on preserving American freedoms. The duo continues to write songs for causes they believe in.

This hip hop track's title and lyrics reference a slogan of the 1960s and '70s , "the revolution will not be televised," which was popularized in a searing 1971 song by poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron. This take on the protest slogan is similarly critical of the media and government and expresses distrust in institutions.

This modern protest song's title is a reference to a chant against President Joe Biden at a NASCAR event that was misheard by a reporter; the phrase has since become a common protest refrain. The video features rapper Loza Alexander, whose other tracks include "Voter Fraud/Fraud," "Wake Up America" and "Canceled."

This September 2021 song by singer-songwriter John Ondrasik is critical of the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The artist said he wrote the song shortly after a suicide bombing there to call out how "America has broken her promise" to Americans and Afghan allies.

The Canadian rapper's single calls out censorship and cancel culture. The song's direct lyrics criticize labeling people based on their political views, characteristics or words as hypocritical, with the artist calling it "performative wokeness."

Released after "Don't Tell Me How to Live," the country rock/rap artist's single criticized COVID-19 policies, big tech, economic policies and the media. Its "Let's go, Brandon" chorus is a reference to an anti-Biden chant. The song calls on Americans to listen to each other and unite.

Released on Truth Social, this country song touches on current issues from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan to Biden's proposed Build Back Better Plan. Rich laments social division and calls out government overreach and straying from faith and individual choice, saying, "Stick your progress where the sun don't shine."

These modern protest songs showcase the power of free speech

Thanks to the First Amendment, we can express our views and lift our voices with protest songs. Speaking up can court controversy, spark conversations and even inspire action. As the artists behind these modern protest songs show, we all have freedom of speech - however we chose to use it.

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Modern Protest Songs: 28 Powerful, Controversial Anthems

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These modern protest songs are some of the most powerful, controversial and talked about pieces of protest music since 2000.

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To mark the 21st Century making it through its teen years, the #20teens is a series from Teen Vogue celebrating the best in culture, politics, and style from the last decade.

So much has changed over the last 10 years, including some of the social issues that have made their way front and center onto the world stage. In many of these instances, the voices of young people are the loudest and most passionate, but no, that's nothing new - young people have been at the forefront of social justice activism for years in the United States.

A big part of what sets this decade of youth activism apart from that history is that today's youth activists have grown up with social media. Experts at navigating the digital space, this generation of young changemakers has been a force when it comes to amplifying their messages, frequently insisting on being heard by the world and the politicians they'll soon be voting for (or against).

Unlike the youth from generations before, who often needed weeks of planning for activism because they relied on methods such as newspaper ads and phone calls to spread the word, today's young activists have been able to build public support immediately with the click of a button. Simultaneously, they have redefined what it means to be an activist and proving that everyone's voice is significant.

With 2020 approaching, during this particularly divisive moment in history, now is the perfect time to look back at some of the movements that have defined this decade and have changed - and will continue to change - the world.

2012: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Dreamer Movement

Young undocumented immigrants, also referred to as Dreamers ( people protected by DACA, as a nod to their belief in the American dream), spent the 2010s fighting for rights in the country they call home.

But UWD wasn't alone on the front line. In June 2012, two protesters launched a hunger strike that shut down President Barack Obama's Denver campaign offices for a week because, as of that year, more people had been deported during Obama's presidency than any other presidency prior.

Not long after, on June 15, 2012, Obama put into place the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) through an executive order. The program provided deportation protections, work permits, and Social Security numbers to about 690,000 undocumented immigrants who, before 2007, were younger than 16 when they came to the United States. Through the program, recipients were able to renew these documents every two years. Despite that massive win, the fight wasn't over.

"I am still worried about deportation because one of my parents is still undocumented," undocumented activist Johanna Calle wrote for the ACLU in 2012. "The thought of losing a parent to deportation is heartbreaking. The administration has given us hope, but there is still so much more work to be done to ensure immigrant families like mine are not torn apart."

2012: Fast-Food Strikers and the Fight for $15

"People were being paid minimum wage and working part-time hours [and] living in complete poverty," said Jonathan Westin, executive director of Service International Employees Union, in 2013. According to Westin, there were people unable to pay rent, "living in the back of cars and homeless shelters, while trying to raise kids. Some people were making $100 a week."

Those workers were fighting for a minimum wage of $15, and their strike helped inspire what came to be known as the Fight for $15 movement.

In 2014, Seattle became the United States' first major city to pass a $15 minimum wage. Two years later, in 2016, those demands were finally acknowledged in California and New York when both states declared that their minimum wages would be increasing to $15 an hour. But that was just the beginning of the response to the years-long fight for $15.

In December 2018, when New Jersey announced its plan to join that list of states increasing its minimum wage - state officials came under fire for postponing that increase for workers under 18. After grassroots efforts, young activists succeeded in ensuring that young workers are included in the wage increase on the same time frame as everyone else.

"At some point, we really thought it was impossible, but we still had the courage to go, keep moving forward, keep organizing, keep pushing forward," 17-year-old Fiona Joseph told Teen Vogue in February. "And I think that our power of organizing, and staying strong no matter what, really pushed us to where we are now."

2013: Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and Black Lives Matter

On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking home from a convenience store when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. In 2013, Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder and acquitted on manslaughter charges. This acquittal led Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors to create the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

"When Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012 and, in 2013, when George Zimmerman was acquitted, my body and spirit was moved into action," Cullors wrote in an op-ed for Teen Vogue about the movement's sixth anniversary earlier this year. "Alicia, Opal, and I created #BlackLivesMatter as an online community to help combat anti-Black racism across the globe."

Black Lives Matter created a space for activists of all ages to take a stand against anti-Black racism. After the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, teen activists held a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest that shut down Chicago streets, and in response to the murder of Eric Garner, then 18-year-old Nupol Kiazolu (now president of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York) led protests in Garner's home state of New York.

Today, Black Lives Matter is a global network of more than 40 chapters, with members "organizing and building local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes."

2016: Standing Rock and NoDAPL

The thousands of Native Americans and other protesters who camped out through a frigid winter were fighting against the completion of the pipeline because of concern that it could contaminate the major water source of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The protests eventually garnered the support of President Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers, who later announced that the construction of the pipeline would stop.

"This entire movement was brought up by the youth," Iron Eyes, a reservation resident, told author Naomi Klein in 2016. "It just started so small...And now, the easement for DAPL was denied."

Once Trump took office, he reversed the block on DAPL. Fights against pipelines all across the country have continued.

2016: Brexit and the "Remain" Campaign

In June 2016, a referendum gave voters in the United Kingdom the chance to say that, by a slim majority, they wanted their nation to leave the European Union (E.U.). The vote divided the country in many ways, including generational lines, with three-quarters of 18- to 24-year-olds voting to stay in the E.U., as nativist backlash to an ongoing mass migration to Europe had Brexit supporters eager to decrease the amount of immigrants entering the country.

Folks against Brexit, many of them young, began protesting outside the Houses of Parliament once Brexit was announced. In March 2019, more than 1 million protesters marched as they demanded another vote.

"Mainstream politics often and intentionally exclude young people. An issue such as Brexit shows something that young people cannot ignore," 23-year-old anti-Brexit activist, Bella Frimpong told Teen Vogue in March 2019, as the referendum's aftermath raged on. "The perfect way to describe it is the fight of our generation. Every single generation has had its fight and for young people of 2018/2019, it's the Brexit issue."

Brexit has been delayed multiple times as a bitter fight has continued to play out in the national government. Protests consisting of hundreds of thousands of anti-Brexit citizens have continued, as well.

2017: Trump's Inauguration, J20, and the Women's March

The election of Trump galvanized the nation, as protests broke out for a number of issues that were directly related to the new president. On the day of Trump's inauguration, one such protest that got a lot of attention was an "anti-fascist" action in D.C., more commonly referred to as "Disrupt J20" (referring to January 20, the day of Trump's inauguration).

The protest resulted in the arrest of 234 people, all of whom were charged with felony rioting,and some faced possible 60-year prison sentences over claims of $100,000 worth of damage and injury to six police officers. According to Rolling Stone, 20 of the people arrested pleaded guilty to lesser charges, 20 had their charges dismissed, a jury found six not guilty, and after over a year of trials, charges were dropped against all remaining defendants.

"It felt like we were treated like cattle when we were arrested after being in the kettle for eight-plus hours," Caroline Unger, a J20 defendant, told Teen Vogue in August 2018. "I think one of the worst parts is that we were never told what was happening. No one would look us in the eye or talk to us directly about how long we would be in the cell blocks, and time itself became a torturous thing because it was held over us without any concern."

J20 was followed by what may have been the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. On January 21, the Women's March on Washington became simply the Women's March as over a million protesters in cities worldwide hit the streets. Following the massive turnout, the Women's March has continued every year, helping to keep momentum alive for resistance to Trump.

2017: Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo

Although Tarana Burke started the #MeToo movement in 2006, it wasn't until October 15, 2017, that the movement went viral. Ten days prior, The New York Times published an article detailing accusations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein. This prompted other women ( and men) to come forward to discuss their experiences with sexual harassment.

The high-profile online activism has had an impact. Since the beginning of the movement, several states have passed laws "prohibiting the use of nondisclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases," and some states are now providing more legal protections for workers.

Additionally, students are speaking out about sexual harassment at school, like Celia Ziliak, who created (S)HE Matters, a movement for sexual harassment education aimed at reducing peer-to-peer sexual violence in Kentucky schools. Amelia Loeffler, a student who works with Celia, told Teen Vogue, "As our generation grows up, we have the capacity to create the future we want, and that future is one where nobody ever feels unsafe or uncomfortable at school or in their workplace."

2018: Parkland and March for Our Lives

On February 14, 2018, one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, when a former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle on the school campus, killing 17 people. Student survivors from Parkland immediately took action, becoming well-known activists with a clear message: #NeverAgain. They wanted gun reform now.

"Since the time I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds," she said at the end of her speech. "The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students, and escape and walk free for an hour before arrest." She also had a powerful message for people who want to see gun violence end: "Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job."

Since March for Our Lives, there have been strides in the fight for gun reform. Various states have made legal strides to curb gun violence, and the NRA is not the political powerhouse it once was.

2018: Fridays for Future and the Climate Strikes

In July 2018, three days of climate activism organized by Zero Hour, an environmental youth group, included lobbying, a Youth Climate Art Festival, and concluded with a protest of hundreds of young people from all over the country at the national mall in Washington, D.C.

"Hunger, violence, racism, poverty - every kind of inequality that exists today is going to get worse as climate change dries up our resources. That's something the older generation doesn't realize," 17-year-old Anna Brooks of Silver Spring, Maryland, told Teen Vogue during the march.

One month later, a 15-year-old Greta Thunberg - inspired by the student walkouts for gun reform in the U.S. - held a climate strike at her school in Sweden. At the time, more than 20,000 students joined in as her initiative spread to hundreds of towns and cities across the world. In September 2019, the growth of the movement was even more evident as 4 million people in all 50 U.S. states and dozens of countries came out for what is believed to be the biggest climate strike ever.

At the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, Greta told leaders, "You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth."

"You are still not mature enough to tell it like it is," she said. "You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal."

2019: ICE and Never Again Action

Trump's focus on immigration policy has raised concerns about what was already a dangerous system. In addition to the larger and more frequent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that have come as a result of Trump's immigration policies, the conditions of the facilities where migrant children are being held have been compared to and referred to as concentration camps.

"When the Jewish people say 'never again,' we mean now. We mean that the suffering of our people and our inherited trauma is not a political tool for politicians to rephrase. We're not here to argue semantics over whether we can call them 'concentration camps'; when we say 'never again,' we mean it is time to close all camps throughout the country," Never Again Action's Blair Nodelman wrote in a Teen Vogue op-ed.

2020s: What's to come?

To the history-makers who are fighting for a better tomorrow, these major moments are proof that anyone, regardless of age, location, and experience, can make a difference. These major moments have changed minds, laws, communities, and the world, and will only continue to do so.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Seven Young Activists to Watch Ahead of the 2020 Elections

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10 Youth Activist Movements That Shaped the 2010s

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As the 2010s come to a close, Teen Vogue offers up a brief history of some of the most formative youth movements of the last 10 years.

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The past decade saw more grassroots activism than at any time since the Great Depression, including the 1960s. We witnessed an unprecedented number of Americans engaged in protest, volunteering (phone banking, door-knocking) for issue campaigns and political races, and donating to progressive causes. The involvement was fragmented into separate movements, so the media didn't notice the unmatched level of activism. Overall, 11 progressive movements that helped define the decade will also shape the future.

1. Occupy Wall Street. It began in Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011, and quickly spread to hundreds of cities. Within a few weeks, police had pushed protesters out of local parks. The movement disappeared but the idea-widening wealth inequality, the one percent versus the 99 percent-has defined the decade and our politics. It put a target on the back of Wall Street, corporate America, and the super-rich. At kitchen tables, in coffee shops, in offices and factories, and in newsrooms, Americans are now talking about economic inequality, corporate greed, and how America's super-rich have damaged our economy and our democracy. An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that Wall Street banks and big corporations wield too much political influence and that the super-rich don't pay their fair share of taxes. No politician-Republican or Democrat-can now run for office without talking about the nation's widening wealth and income gap. Occupy Wall Street is responsible for altering this national conversation.

2. The Fight for $15. The idea of a $15 minimum wage was a pipe dream in 2010 but now is mainstream. A Brookings Institution report released in November 2019 found that more than 53 million people, or 44 percent of all workers ages 18 to 64, earn low hourly wages. Many families need more than two jobs to make ends meet, including one-fifth of all schoolteachers. The new slogan for many unions is now "One job should be enough." Congress hasn't increased the federal minimum wage ($7.25) since 2009, so activists have pushed the issue in cities and states. The Fight for $15 burst forward, with wildcat strikes at fast-food and retail outlets morphing into successful legislative initiatives and ballot campaigns. According to the National Employment Law Project, 24 states and 48 cities and counties will raise their minimum wages sometime in 2020. In 32 of those jurisdictions, it will reach or surpass $15 per hour. Activists also pressured McDonald's, Walmart, Disney, Bank of America, and other large employers into raising their pay scales. The fight for higher wages coincided with an upsurge of labor activism, including successful strikes by GM workers and teachers in red and blue states. According to a recent Gallup poll, public support for unions reached a two-decade peak of 64 percent.

3. Black Lives Matter. It started as a hashtag in 2013, led by three black women activists in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's murderer, George Zimmerman. It soon became a movement, to campaign against violence and systemic racism toward black people. The movement expanded in 2014 after the street protests following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island at the hands of police. Polls show that Americans have become more aware of the reality of police abuse of African Americans. BLM pressured the 2016 presidential candidates to address racial disparities, including in the criminal justice system. Several progressive district attorneys were elected on such a platform. Even Michael Bloomberg, an advocate of stop-and-frisk policing in communities of color when he was New York City mayor, felt it necessary to apologize and renounce the policy once he decided to run for president.

4. Women's March and #MeToo. The largest protest in U.S. history (four million-plus people in cities across the country) occurred the day after Trump's inauguration (January 21, 2017), re-energizing the women's movement. The pink pussy hats, first seen on that day, became an immediate and ongoing symbol of women's empowerment. According to sociologist Dana Fisher (in her book American Resistance), 58 percent of Women's March participants subsequently contacted a public official and 40 percent reported attending a congressional town hall. That energy was translated into the 2018 midterm elections, with a large increase in female voters, especially in the suburbs. The #MeToo movement grew following the exposure of sexual-abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. It spread virally to the streets, the courtroom, and the political world, forcing the firing or retirement of high-profile figures in politics, entertainment, universities, hospitals, and other fields. It then spread to the workplaces of ordinary women, challenging the predatory behavior of male supervisors and managers. The American workplace will never be the same.

5. Dreamers. Immigrant students brought to the U.S. as children and knowing America as their only home mobilized to demand they be treated as full-scale Americans. In December 2010, the DREAM Act, which would have given these immigrants a path to citizenship, passed the House, but it failed to reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to end debate in the Senate. Undaunted, the movement pushed California, in July 2011, to enact the California DREAM Act, giving undocumented immigrant students access to private college scholarships for state schools. Other states followed. The movement then successfully lobbied President Obama to announce, in June 2012, that his administration would stop deporting undocumented immigrants who match certain criteria included in the proposed DREAM Act, which became the new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The Trump administration rolled back the program, but activists have taken the case to the Supreme Court. The movement escalated after Trump's effort to expand deportations and restrict asylum seekers, creating a groundswell of opposition to his inhumane policies.

6. Tenants' rights. Unable to afford to buy homes, more middle class families are renting, and competing with the poor for scarce apartments, so landlords are raising rents. More than half of all renters spend more than 30 percent of their incomes just to keep a roof over their heads. This has triggered a renters revolt across the country. Groups in Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Long Beach, Orlando, and other cities have waged rent strikes and mounted campaigns for rent control, protections against unfair evictions, and local funding for more affordable rental housing. Minneapolis became the first city to eliminate single-family zoning, and others may soon follow suit. Last year, Oregon became the first state in the nation to adopt a statewide rent cap. New York state enacted its most important strengthening of rent control laws in decades by giving New York City control over its tenant protection regulations. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a groundbreaking law that limits annual rent increases and requires landlords to have a "just cause" in order to evict a tenant. Several Democratic presidential candidates have announced ambitious plans to protect renters' rights, create more affordable housing, and restrict exclusionary zoning laws. Tenants may be the sleeping giant of American politics.

7. Voting rights. Under the leadership of the Reverend William Barber II, activists in North Carolina began weekly "Moral Mondays" protests and civil disobedience at the State Capitol building in Raleigh in 2012. They were reacting to Republicans taking control of both houses of the North Carolina legislature and the governor's office for the first time since 1870, and adopting a series of laws restricting voting rights, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, education spending, abortion, LGBT rights, and environmental regulations. The movement protests, including multiple arrests of Barber and other leaders, spread to other states, and eventually became part of a national movement to restore voting rights and increase voter turnout, especially among African Americans. In 2018, Florida voters adopted a ballot measure restoring voting rights to former felons. In Georgia, the defeat of state Senator Stacey Abrams for governor, largely due to the suppression of black voters, shined a spotlight on the GOP's ongoing crusade to restrict voting rights, and catalyzed a nationwide campaign to expand the franchise and increase voter turnout among people of color.

8. Environmental activism/Green New Deal. Taking a cue from the 1980s anti-apartheid movement, in 2012 student activists on college campuses began demanding that their institutions divest stock in corporations that profit from the use and abuse of fossil fuels, the major cause of the global climate crisis. Since its inception, more than 1,150 institutions with more than $11 trillion in assets committed to divest from fossil fuels, including local governments, pension funds, religious institutions, and universities, most recently the mammoth University of California system's $13.4 billion endowment and $80 billion pension fund. The 350 movement's campaign to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline drew public attention to the need to address the twin problems of climate change and jobs. This led to the Green New Deal, a transformative idea to re-invest public and private resources in energy-efficient, job-creating "green" industries and public facilities. The movement mushroomed in 2018, catalyzed by the youth-led Sunrise Movement and promoted in Congress by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA).

9. The March for Our Lives. On February 14, 2018, a gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. Since the murder of 27 children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, there have been at least 2,178 mass shootings resulting in at least 2,458 people killed and 9,119 wounded. The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas responded to their personal tragedy by building a movement to stop gun violence. It began with a March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C., a month after the murders, and close to a thousand associated events across the country, with a turnout estimated between 1.2 million and 2 million protesters. The Parkland students formed Never Again MSD and spent the summer and fall traveling the country for the "Road to Change'' tour urging people, especially young people, to register to vote for the November 2018 midterm elections. Voting by young people spiked significantly that year, particularly in Florida, where 37 percent of the state's 18- to 29-year-olds went to the polls, compared to the 22 percent in the 2014 midterms. One surprise winner was Lucy McBath, whose 17-year-old son Jordan was shot dead at a Florida gas station by a white man who complained about loud music. McBath won a congressional seat in Georgia's Sixth District in the Atlanta suburbs that was once represented by Newt Gingrich. She decided to run for Congress after the mass shooting at the Parkland high school in February.

10. Indivisible. After the 2016 election, a few former congressional staffers posted a 23-page handbook, Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda, online. The authors hoped to teach progressives how to take action against Trump's "bigoted and anti-democratic agenda," similar to how the Tea Party challenged Obama. The document soon went viral. Within two months, more than 3,800 local Indivisible chapters had formed, mushrooming to more than 6,000 by the end of the year, in every congressional district in the county. The movement trained and mobilized many first-time activists and new leaders in the skills of issue organizing and campaign work. Other new groups, like Swing Left and Sister District, also recruited activists into key battleground races for Congress and other offices. In the 2018 midterm elections, more than 116 million voters went to the polls-49 percent of eligible voters-the highest turnout rate for a midterm election since 1914. This led to an upsurge of women, LGBT people, African Americans, and Latinos elected to office, including record numbers in Congress. Despite the Republicans' success over the past two decades at gerrymandering House districts, Democrats gained 40 seats in the House, clear evidence of backlash against Trump. Meanwhile, Indivisible chapters have continued to expand, gearing up for the 2020 elections, focusing on increasing the number of progressives in office.

11. Democratic Socialism. In 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, captured the nation's attention-and more than 13 million votes-in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. Two years later, voters elected democratic socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Detroit to Congress, while dozens of their counterparts won races for city council, state legislative, school board, and other seats around the country, including six members of the Chicago City Council. Sanders remains a strong contender for the Democratic nomination in 2020. According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 43 percent of all Americans, and 58 percent of those between 18 and 34, believe that socialism would be a "good thing" for the country. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-which long languished with just a few thousand members-now counts more than 60,000 people among its ranks, with over 200 chapters in red and blue states alike. Iowa has the highest density of DSA members per capita. Almost all those new members are millennials or younger, without the Cold War-era hang-ups of their baby boomer and Gen X parents. Thanks in part to this socialist uprising, ideas considered radical only a few years ago-universal health care, tuition-free college, a $15 federal minimum wage, requiring big corporations to put workers and union members on their boards, green jobs, and many others-are now widely accepted by the general public and by candidates running for office.

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The past decade saw more grassroots activism than at any time since the Great Depression, including the 1960s. We witnessed an unprecedented number of Americans engaged in protest, volunteering (phone banking, door-knocking) for issue campaigns and political races, and donating to progressive causes.

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Climate, Energy & Environment - Research and data from the Pew Research Center

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Research and data on Climate, Energy & Environment from the Pew Research Center

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Another year, another temperature record broken. The decade spanning 2010 to 2019 was the hottest documented since 1880, climate experts say. And 2019 joins the five preceding years at the top of the average annual temperature list, second only to 2016. Fueled by continued greenhouse gas emissions, Earth's most recent six years have been the most sweltering ones yet, report Henry Fountain and Nadja Popovich for the New York Times.

Arriving on the heels of months of floods, wildfires and melting sea ice, the announcements have unfortunately not come as a surprise. Since late last year, researchers tracking temperature highs around the globe have forecast that warming trends will not only continue, but increase in extremity.

"These announcements might sound like a broken record," NASA's Gavin Schmidt tells Damian Carrington at the . "But what is being heard is the drumbeat of the Anthropocene."

Climbing global temperatures, one of the best-known symptoms of climate change, spell trouble for the planet and its many residents. Habitats, plant and animal species, and irreplaceable natural resources that support billions of people worldwide are already rapidly disappearing-and should things continue business as usual, such trends are poised to continue.

In a way, these reports represent a sort of planetary health assessment. "We're seeing that the Earth has a temperature," NOAA climatologist Ahira Sanchez-Lugo tells Tara Law at magazine. "But not only that, we see that there are symptoms."

A closer look at the numbers

Because dedicated, global-scale temperature monitoring began only in the 1800s, our records don't capture climate fluctuations from most of Earth's history. Due in large part to humans' industrial output in the 20th century, however, the annual rate at which global surface temperatures have been rising has more than doubled since 1981, report Brady Dennis, Andrew Freedman and John Muyskens for the Washington Post. The repercussions of this trend are reflected in statistics at both local and worldwide scales.

Last year also saw the hottest average ocean temperatures yet recorded. Europe and Australia were among the regions that experienced their warmest years in 2019. Zooming in further, Shahdad, Iran, hit its maximum 2019 temperature on July 2, clocking in at a whopping 127.6 degrees Fahrenheit. These numbers aren't universal, though. In North America, for instance, last year's temperatures ranked only 14th in the past 140 years, reports Jeff Masters for Scientific American.

On a global scale, however, 2019 temperatures topped those from 2016 by 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports published yesterday. It also bested the long-term average from 1901 to 2000 by 1.71 degrees Fahrenheit, and the average from 1951 to 1980 by 1.78 degrees Fahrenheit. In separate publications, the UK Met Office, Berkeley Earth and Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service came to similar conclusions.

The year's near-record-breaking global warmth is especially surprising because, all else equal, 2019 shouldn't have been that hot of a year. From January to December, the sun was at a particularly low point in its activity, sending less toasty radiation our way than usual. 2019 also wasn't a year with a strong El Niño, which, in 2016, pumped a ton of ocean heat into the atmosphere, Scientific American reports.

How did we get here?

So what does help explain 2019's temperature spike? Human activity. As humans continue to fell carbon-storing trees and burn fossil fuels for transportation, electricity and more, the atmosphere ends up full of gas that's eager to store heat-hence the term greenhouse gas. A lot of that gas ends up funneled into the oceans, driving up temperatures both in and out of the water.

The world's temperature undergoes natural fluctuations due a bevy of factors, including wobbles in our planet's orbit, dips and spikes in the sun's activity, and massive volcanic eruptions. But what's happened to the globe since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is unprecedented. Since the mid-20th century, human-driven changes to climate have driven jumps in Earth's temperature that can no longer be explained by natural processes alone.

These skyrocketing heat trends have left their mark. As the Guardian reports, data from ice cores suggest today's temperatures are unprecedented in the last 100,000 years. And atmospheric sampling shows this much carbon dioxide hasn't filled our skies for many millions of years.

Who's been most affected?

Climate change isn't picky. The effects of the heat have been diverse and far-reaching, hitting every corner of the globe.

Residents of Alaska experienced their warmest year on record in 2019, the New York Times reports. Across the northerly state, glaciers have melted, ground has thawed, and sea ice-free waters have begun to encroach on shores. The creeping warmth has driven animals like walruses from the region, imperiling the livelihoods of indigenous Alaskans, reported Madeline Fitzgerald for magazine last year.

A hop across oceans reveals similarly dire conditions in southern Africa, where the worst drought in decades has triggered crop losses, food shortages and rapidly declining water levels in the region's life-sustaining rivers.

In Indonesia, the aftermath has already spilled over into 2020, as monsoon rains and floods, fueled by atypically warm ocean water, displace residents by the thousands. Further south, in Australia, wildfires continue to rage across the landscape, sparked by a hot, dry year that parched native vegetation into a carpet of kindling.

No one is immune to these effects, Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, tells Grace Hauck and Doyle Rice. "Climate change isn't just a science issue, or an environmental issue," she says. "It's a human issue that matters to all of us living on this planet today, whether we know it or not."

What's next?

In October 2018, scientists from around the world issued the world a warning: A temperature rise beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels (circa the 1850s) would leave hundreds of millions of people around the world grappling with drought, flooding, extreme heat and increased poverty.

As of January 2020, the globe stands dangerously close to the precipice. The average temperature in 2019 exceeded the average temperature of the latter half of the 19th century by 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). And experts grimly project that the next decade could bring much of the same.

But as environmental economist Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth tells the Washington Post, human intervention could still do some good-and perhaps even help stop or reverse these trends. "If we continue emitting [greenhouse gases] at current levels, we will continue warming at about the same rate," he says. "What happens in the future is really up to us."

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The 2010s Were the Hottest Decade on Record. What Happens Next?

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Another year, another temperature record broken. The decade spanning 2010 to 2019 was the hottest documented since 1880, climate experts say. And 2019 joins the five preceding years at the top of the average annual temperature list, second only to 2016.

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Fever chart: Earth had its hottest decade on record in 2010s

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The decade that just ended was by far the hottest ever measured on Earth, capped off by the second-warmest year on record, two U.S. agencies reported Wednesday.

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Albertalli, Becky.Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens agenda

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Several radio programmers say surveys of listeners predict the song will continue to rise. "It's been phenomenal," said Tom Poleman, the president for national programming at Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, which operates 850 stations. "Everything we are seeing shows it's going to be another monster hit for them."

Support for gay rights is certainly not a new phenomenon in pop music. Frank Ocean, a singer in the hip-hop collective Odd Future, broke down barriers in R&B last year when he released "Channel Orange," an album with songs about his love for a man. Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" was a chart-topping song in 2011 that generally affirmed acceptance of homosexuality, and artists like Katy Perry, Fun and Kacey Musgraves have made support for gay rights part of their public personas.

Going farther back, Melissa Etheridge, who is openly gay, scored Top 10 hits in the 1990s with songs about her lesbian relationships, "Come to My Window" and "I'm the Only One."

But Macklemore has offered up an overtly political message in favor of gay marriage from the point of view of a straight man. "This is a song that has the most unequivocal pro-equality message to ever be expressed in a major single, and it's really reached a wide range of audiences," said Rich Ferraro, a spokesman for GLAAD, a gay-right organization that tracks media.

In the song, Macklemore takes other rappers to task for using gay slurs, ties abusive language to bullying of gay teenagers and mocks religious leaders for opposing gay marriage. He states plainly where he stands on the marriage question: "No freedom till we're equal/ Damn right I support it." Then Mary Lambert, an openly lesbian singer, delivers a stirring chorus over Mr. Lewis's lush piano. "I can't change even if I tried," she sings, and "My love/ My Love/ My Love/ She keeps me warm/ She keeps me warm."

In a telephone interview, Macklemore said he composed the rap in March 2012 after reading a news article about a teenager who committed suicide after being bullied. He said he thought the epithets routinely heard in rap music might be partly to blame, and that denying gay adults the right to marry might also contribute to despair among gay teenagers. He also wanted to write a song, he said, to support his two gay uncles and his gay godfather in Seattle, all of whom are in committed relationships.

"I just wanted to hold myself accountable and hold hip-hop accountable and bring up an issue that was being pushed under the rug," he said.

From the start, the duo intended "Same Love" to have a political impact. Released as a single in July 2012, they offered it as a theme song to groups working to pass Referendum 74, which legalized same-sex marriage in Washington State. Some profits from the single were donated to the advocacy group Washington United for Marriage. In October, Macklemore and Mr. Lewis released a video for the song with a rosy depiction of a gay marriage that political organizers said helped influenced the vote.

The same month, Ellen DeGeneres, who is gay, invited the duo to perform the song on her show. Still, the single probably would have faded into obscurity after the state referendum had Macklemore and Mr. Lewis not had a surprise radio hit with "Thrift Shop," a comic song about the joys of bargain hunting. When that song hit No. 1 in February, it created a fierce demand for more tracks, radio executives said.

In March, the duo's radio promoters started urging radio stations to play "Can't Hold Us," a playful rap about having success without a major label deal that eventually rose to No. 1 in early May.

A few stations went a different direction. Jeb Freedman, a disc jockey and programmer at the alternative rock station KTCL in Denver, passed over "Can't Hold Us" and decided to spin "Same Love" instead. The song had moved him, he said, and seemed timely because a bill allowing gays to enter civil unions was up for a vote in the Colorado Legislature. "We poll our audience constantly with Web surveys, and the response was unbelievably positive," he said. "I thought it was going to be polarizing, but it wasn't."

Mr. Freedman persuaded program directors at alternative stations in Los Angeles and Dallas to play the record, and stations in San Francisco and Seattle then followed suit.

By May, "Can't Hold Us" was cresting to No. 1, and Top 40 and Rhythmic stations in several big cities had begun dropping "Same Love" into their playlists, often pegging it to political events. KROQ in Los Angeles added it the day of the Supreme Court hearings on California's Proposition 8. KDWB in Minneapolis played the record the same week that Minnesota approved gay marriage. By last week it was playing on about 260 stations.

So far urban hip-hop stations have been slow to add "Same Love" to their rotations, although it has been getting airplay on a few, like WPGC in Washington, D.C. Peter Rosenberg, a D.J. on Hot 97 in New York, said his listeners had applauded his decision to play the song on his Sunday night show. He predicts that "Same Love" will become a hit on urban radio, too.

"I'm not saying that no one will resist," he said. "Hip-hop still has some catching up to do on this issue."

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same-sex marriage  civil unions and domestic partnerships

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Several radio programmers say surveys of listeners predict the song will continue to rise. "It's been phenomenal," said Tom Poleman, the president for national programming at Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, which operates 850 stations. "Everything we are seeing shows it's going to be another monster hit for them."

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The number of Americans supporting same-sex relationships has dropped from 71 to 64 percent compared to one year ago, with more people thinking it is not morally acceptable, according to a new Gallup poll-a change driven mostly by Republicans.

The survey, Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs poll, was conducted between May 1 and 24 among a random sample of 1,011 adults living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

It found that Americans were less supportive of a number of issues related to sexuality and relationships, including birth control-with 88 percent of Americans finding it morally acceptable this year compared to 92 percent in 2022-and divorce, support for which dropped from 81 to 78 percent.

The fall in the number of Americans who think that gay and lesbian relationships are morally acceptable-down seven percentage points-was the most significant in the entire list of issues on which Gallup questioned respondents.

While from a long-term perspective, Americans' opinion on issues around LGBTQ+ rights have followed a liberal trend-in 2002 a minority 38 percent of Americans found same-sex relationships acceptable- the drop in support for same-sex relationships this year has brought the U.S. back to 2019, when 64 percent of Americans said they were socially acceptable.

The fall was driven by Republicans, according to Gallup. While 56 percent of Americans identifying as Republicans found same-sex relationships morally acceptable in 2022, only 41 percent do so this year. It is the lowest figure reported in Gallup's annual survey since 2014-when it was 39 percent-undoing almost a decade of increasing support on the issue.

The decline in Republican support comes at a time when conservative forces inside the party have been pushing to limit some LGBTQ+ rights across the country, such as transgender women competing in female sports events. Since the beginning of 2021, more than 20 GOP-led states have passed bills limiting trans kids' and teens' access to gender-affirming healthcare, as well as to binary spaces like women-only school toilets.

A strong majority of Democrats and independents continue to support same-sex relationships, with 79 and 73 percent of them finding it morally acceptable, respectively. But there was still a 6 percent drop in support among Democrats: in 2022, 85 percent of Democrats were accepting of the issue.

Despite the drop in approval, Americans' support for same-sex marriage remains strong, Gallup has found. According to the poll, 71 percent of Americans think it should remain legal-matching the number reported last year.

Once again, support for same-sex marriage was lower among Republicans, at 49 percent, compared to Democrats (84 percent) and independents (78 percent).

Most Americans have consistently supported same-sex marriage since the 2010s. It became law after the Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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Americans are becoming less accepting of same-sex relationships, poll shows

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The drop in support has been led by Republicans, Gallup found in its annual Values and Beliefs poll.

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Contents

1. Early Years: Same-Sex Marriage Bans

2. Marriage Equality: Turning the Tide

3. The Defense of Marriage Act

4. Pushing for Change: Civil Unions

5. Domestic Partnerships

6. United States v. Windsor

7. Obergefell v. Hodges

8. Full Marriage Equality Attained

In the landmark 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, making gay marriage legal throughout America. The ruling was a culmination of decades of struggles, setbacks and victories along the road to full marriage equality in the United States.

Early Years: Same-Sex Marriage Bans

In 1970, just one year after the historic Stonewall Riots that galvanized the gay rights movement, law student Richard Baker and librarian James McConnell applied for a marriage license in Minnesota.

Clerk Gerald Nelson rejected their application because they were a same-sex couple, and a trial court upheld his decision. Baker and McConnell appealed, but the state Supreme Court affirmed the trial judge's decision in 1971 in Baker v. Nelson.

When the couple appealed again, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 declined to hear the case "for want of a substantial federal question." This ruling effectively blocked federal courts from ruling on same-sex marriage for decades, leaving the decision solely in the hands of states, which dealt blow after blow to those hoping to see gay marriage becoming legal.

In 1973, for instance, Maryland became the first state to create a law that explicitly defines marriage as a union between a man and woman, a belief held by many conservative religious groups. Other states quickly followed suit: Virginia in 1975, and Florida, California and Wyoming in 1977.

Of course, numerous other same-sex couples across the country had also applied for marriage licenses over the years, but each ended in a somber note like Baker and McConnell's case. Though the gay rights movement saw some advancements in the 1970s and 1980s-such as Harvey Milk becoming the first openly gay man elected to public office in the country in 1977-the fight for gay marriage made little headway for many years.

Marriage Equality: Turning the Tide

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, same-sex couples saw the first signs of hope on the marriage front in a long time. In 1989, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that allowed homosexual couples and unmarried heterosexual couples to register for domestic partnerships, which granted hospital visitation rights and other benefits.

Three years later, the District of Columbia similarly passed a new law that allowed same-sex couples to register as domestic partners. Like with San Francisco's ordinance, D.C.'s domestic partnership status fell far short of full marriage, but it did grant D.C. same-sex couples some important benefits, such as allowing partners to receive health care coverage if their significant other was employed by the D.C. government.

Then, in 1993, the highest court in Hawaii ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage may violate that state constitution's Equal Protection Clause-the first time a state court has ever inched toward making gay marriage legal.

The Hawaii Supreme Court sent the case-brought by a gay male couple and two lesbian couples who were denied marriage licenses in 1990-back for further review to the lower First Circuit Court, which in 1991 originally dismissed the suit.

As the state tried to prove that there was "compelling state interest" in justifying the ban, the case would be tied up in litigation for the next three years.

The Defense of Marriage Act

Opponents of gay marriage, however, did not sit on their haunches. In response to Hawaii's 1993 court decision in Baehr v. Lewin, the U.S. Congress in 1996 passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which President Bill Clinton signed into law.

DOMA didn't ban gay marriage outright, but specified that only heterosexual couples could be granted federal marriage benefits. That is, even if a state made gay marriage legal, same-sex couples still wouldn't be able to file income taxes jointly, sponsor spouses for immigration benefits or receive spousal Social Security payments, among many other things.

The act was a huge setback for the marriage equality movement, but transient good news arose three months later: Hawaii Judge Kevin S. C. Chang ordered the state to stop denying licenses to same-sex couples.

Unfortunately for these couples looking to get married, the celebration was short-lived. In 1998, voters approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in the state.

Pushing for Change: Civil Unions

The next decade saw a whirlwind of activity on the gay marriage front, beginning with the year 2000, when Vermont became the first state to legalize civil unions, a legal status that provides most of the state-level benefits of marriage.

Three years later, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, a ruling that, unlike Hawaii's, wouldn't be overturned by voters. The state finally introduced the country to gay marriage (minus the federal benefits) when it began issuing same-sex marriage licenses on May 17, 2004.

Later that year, the U.S. Senate blocked a Constitutional amendment-supported by President George W. Bush -that would outlaw gay marriage across the country.

2004 was notable for couples in many other states as well, though for the opposite reason: Ten typically conservative states, along with Oregon, enacted state-level bans on gay marriage. Kansas and Texas were next in 2005, and 2006 saw seven more states passing Constitutional amendments against gay marriage.

But towards the end of the decade, gay marriage became legal in . and various states, including Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont (the first state to approve it by legislative means) and New Hampshire.

Domestic Partnerships

Throughout the decade and the beginning of the next, California frequently made headlines for seesawing on the gay marriage issue.

The state was the first to pass a domestic partnership statute in 1999, and legislators tried to pass a same-sex marriage bill in 2005 and 2007. The bills were vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger both times.

In May 2008, the state Supreme Court struck down the 1977 state law banning same-sex marriage, but just a few months later voters approved Proposition 8, which again restricted marriage to heterosexual couples.

The highly contentious ballot measure was declared unconstitutional two years later, but multiple appeals kept the matter unsettled until 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case. Hollingsworth v. Perry legalized same-sex marriage in California.

United States v. Windsor

The early 2010s continued the state-level battles over gay marriage that defined the preceding decade, with at least one notable event. For the first time in the country's history, voters (rather than judges or legislators) in Maine, Maryland, and Washington approved Constitutional amendments permitting same-sex marriage in 2012.

Same-sex marriage also became a federal issue again.

In 2010, Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage, found Section 3 of DOMA-the part of the 1996 law that defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman-to be unconstitutional. Foundations of the act had finally begun to crumble, but the real hammer fell with United States v. Windsor.

In 2007, New York lesbian couple Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer wed in Ontario, Canada. The State of New York recognized the residents' marriage, but the federal government, thanks to DOMA, did not. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her estate to Windsor; since the couple's marriage was not federally recognized, Windsor didn't qualify for tax exemption as a surviving spouse and the government imposed $363,000 in estate taxes.

Windsor sued the government in late 2010. A few months later, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Barack Obama administration would no longer defend DOMA, leaving a representative of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives to take on the case.

In 2012, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that DOMA violates the Constitution's equal protection clause, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments for the case.

The following year, the court ruled in favor of Windsor, ultimately striking down Section 3 of DOMA.

Obergefell v. Hodges

Though the U.S. government could now no longer deny federal benefits to married same-sex couples, other parts of DOMA were still intact, including Section 2, which declared that states and territories could refuse to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples from other states. Soon enough, however, DOMA lost its power thanks to the historic Obergefell v. Hodges.

The case involved several groups of same-sex couples who sued their respective states ( Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee) for the states' bans on same-sex marriage and refusal to recognize such marriages performed elsewhere.

The plaintiffs-led by Jim Obergefell, who sued because he was unable to put his name on his late husband's death certificate-argued that the laws violated the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In each case, trial courts sided with the plaintiffs, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit disagreed, bringing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Full Marriage Equality Attained

As with United States v. Windsor, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in favor of same-sex marriage rights, ultimately making gay marriage legal across the nation in June 2015.

By this time, it was still outlawed in only 13 states, and more than 20 other countries had already legalized gay marriage, starting with the Netherlands in December, 2000. Northern Island is the most recent country to legalize gay marriage in October, 2019.

A Pew Research Center poll in 2001 found that 57 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage and only 35 percent supported it. Fifteen years later, in 2016, a Pew poll found almost the complete opposite: Americans supported same-sex marriage by a margin of 55 percent to 37 percent.

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Early Years: Same-Sex Marriage Bans Marriage Equality: Turning the Tide The Defense of Marriage Act Pushing for Change: Civil Unions Domestic Partnerships United States v. Windsor Obergefell v. Hodges Full Marriage Equality Attained In the landmark 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S.

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A very LGBTQ decade: Gay marriage, trans rights, ‘rainbow wave’

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From the legalization of same-sex marriage across the U.S. to the political “rainbow wave,” the 2010s have been filled with LGBTQ milestones.

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The Fight For Same-Sex Marriage Isn’t Over. Far From It.

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Some LGBTQ leaders fear the Supreme Court could weaken or overturn the constitutional right to gay marriage as soon as next year.

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States cannot keep same-sex couples from marrying and must recognize their unions, the Supreme Court says in a ruling that for months has been the focus of speculation. The decision was 5-4.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, seen as a pivotal swing vote in the case, wrote the majority opinion. All four justices who voted against the ruling wrote their own dissenting opinions: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

"They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law," Kennedy wrote of same-sex couples in the case. "The Constitution grants them that right."

Comparing the ruling to other landmark decisions, NPR's Nina Totenberg says, "This is probably right up there with Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade - if you like it or hate it - and today, Obergefell v. Hodges. This was a historic moment."

The opinion includes more than 100 pages; we've embedded it near the bottom of this post.
Update at 11:30 a.m. ET: 'Our Love Is Equal,' Obergefell Says
Friday's ruling "affirms what millions across this country already know to be true in their hearts: our love is equal," says lead plaintiff Jim Obergefell, who challenged Ohio's ban on same-sex marriage.

Obergefell continued, "the four words etched onto the front of the Supreme Court - 'equal justice under law' - apply to us, too."

He filed suit because he wasn't allowed to put his name on his late husband John Arthur's death certificate after Arthur died from ALS. Holding a photograph of Arthur as he spoke Friday, Obergefell said, "No American should have to suffer that indignity."

Obergefell has been traveling from Cincinnati to Washington every week, to be sure he would be in the court when a decision was announced in his case.
Update at 11:15 a.m. ET: 'Like A Thunderbolt,' Obama Says
Speaking at the White House, President Obama praised the Supreme Court's ruling, saying it arrived "like a thunderbolt" after a series of back-and-forth battles over same-sex marriage.

Obama says the ruling "will strengthen all of our communities" by offering dignity and equal status to all same-sex couples and their families.

The president calls the ruling "a victory for America."
Update at 10:37 a.m. ET: More On The Ruling, And Obama's Reaction
"The ancient origins of marriage confirm its centrality, but it has not stood in isolation from developments in law and society," Kennedy wrote. His opinion sketches a history of how ideas of marriage have evolved along with the changing roles and legal status of women.

Comparing that evolution to society's views of gays and lesbians, Kennedy noted that for years, "a truthful declaration by same-sex couples of what was in their hearts had to remain unspoken."

"The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times," Kennedy wrote after recounting the legal struggles faced by same-sex partners.

The Supreme Court said that the right to marry is fundamental - and Kennedy wrote that under the 14th Amendment's protections, "couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty."

In his dissent, Roberts wrote that the court had taken an "extraordinary step" in deciding not to allow states to decide the issue for themselves, saying that the Constitution does not define marriage.

Calling the ruling "deeply disheartening," Roberts said that those on the winning side of the issue should celebrate a victory - "But do not celebrate the Constitution," he wrote. "It had nothing to do with it."

Justice Scalia said the Supreme Court's "highly unrepresentative panel of nine" had violated "a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation."

We've covered those dissents in a separate post.

Welcoming the news on Twitter, President Obama wrote, "Today is a big step in our march toward equality. Gay and lesbian couples now have the right to marry, just like anyone else. #LoveWins."
Our original post continues:
The justices ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges, which is linked to three other same-sex marriage cases that rose up through the court system. Together, they involve a dozen couples who challenged same-sex marriage bans in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee - the only states with bans on marriage between gay and lesbian couples that had been sustained by a federal appeals court.

Friday's ruling overturned that decision by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. As the Supreme Court's summary states, "The history of marriage is one of both continuity and change."

The justices had been asked to decide whether the 14th Amendment requires states to a) license same-sex marriages and b) recognize such unions that were made in other states.

The 14th Amendment, we'll remind you, was ratified shortly after the Civil War. It has to do with U.S. citizenship - and with providing equal protection for all citizens.

Before Friday's ruling, gay marriage had already been made legal in 37 states and the District of Columbia - by either legislative or voter action or by federal courts that overturned state' bans.

As NPR's Nina Totenberg reported when the Supreme Court heard the current case back in April, conservative justices had pointed questions for the attorneys:

"Justice Scalia asked whether ministers would be able to refuse to marry two gay men. The answer was that it has to be worked out under state laws. He said, but that could happen - it could happen that a minister would be forced to marry two gay men, in violation of his beliefs.

"Justice Alito asked, well then why not marry four gay men together? Why just two?"

The ruling announced Friday adds new definition to an issue that has remained controversial even as an increasing number of Americans say they support equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. A recent Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans - an all-time high - support extending the same rights and privileges to same-sex marriages as traditional ones.

That figure included "37 percent of Republicans, 64 percent of independents, and 76 percent of Democrats," as we reported last month. And it included all age groups except for one: those 65 and over.

The court noted the change in thinking, stating:

"Well into the 20th century, many States condemned same-sex intimacy as immoral, and homosexuality was treated as an illness. Later in the century, cultural and political developments allowed same-sex couples to lead more open and public lives. Extensive public and private dialogue followed, along with shifts in public attitudes. Questions about the legal treatment of gays and lesbians soon reached the courts, where they could be discussed in the formal discourse of the law."

For supporters of same-sex marriage, Friday's ruling comes as a long-awaited bookend to the Supreme Court's 2013 ruling that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act and required the U.S. government to provide the same benefits to both gay and heterosexual couples.

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Supreme Court Declares Same-Sex Marriage Legal In All 50 States

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States cannot keep same-sex couples from marrying and must recognize their unions, the Supreme Court says in a ruling that for months has been the focus of speculation. The decision was 5-4. Justice Anthony Kennedy, seen as a pivotal swing vote in the case, wrote the majority opinion.

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Skip to Content

From gathering supporters in small towns across the country to rallying in front of the Supreme Court of the United States, we gave our all to ensure every person, regardless of whom they love, is recognized equally under the law.

A Growing Call for Equality

Efforts to legalize same-sex marriage began to pop up across the country in the 1990s, and with it challenges on the state and national levels. Civil unions for same-sex couples existed in many states but created a separate but equal standard. At the federal level, couples were denied access to more than 1,100 federal rights and responsibilities associated with the institution, as well as those denied by their given state. The Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law in 1996 and defined marriage by the federal government as between a man and woman, thereby allowing states to deny marriage equality.

New Century & New Beginnings

As the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas struck down sodomy laws in 2003, another victory was celebrated as Massachussetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage via a court ruling. On the federal level, however, efforts continued to prevent equality from becoming a reality. President Bush announced his opposition to same-sex marriage while the House introduced a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Rising Support Signals Hope

States from coast to coast began striking down past bans and enshrining marriage equality in new laws. California famously achieved marriage equality in 2008, only to have it dismantled again by the introduction and passage of Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that updated the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, that same year. The amendment later was disputed in lower level courts before making its way to the Supreme Court.

A Turning Point for Change

Only a few years after President Obama declared DOMA unconstitutional, - and instructed the Justice Department to stop defending it in court - the Supreme Court advanced marriage equality through key decisions in 2013. Hollingsworth v. Perry determined Prop. 8 lacked legal standing while United States v. Windsor deemed DOMA unconstitutional - all but paving the way to full equality.

Marriage Equality Becomes a Reality

The moment for full marriage equality finally arrived on June 26, 2015, with the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. In a landmark 5-4 decision, marriage equality became the law of the land and granted same-sex couples in all 50 states the right to full, equal recognition under the law.

HRC's Work Changing Hearts & Minds

HRC knew from the very beginning that the fight for marriage equality wasn't just about changing policies - it was about changing hearts and minds. People needed to hear the stories of couples and families across the country impacted by laws that failed to grant them the recognition they deserved.

Decades of Championing Equality

Nationwide marriage equality was at the forefront of HRC's work for years before public sentiment toward same-sex marriage shifted. We consistently worked with coalitions across the country to rally support on the local, state and federal levels to ensure policies were inclusive of LGBTQ+ people. In 2013, just weeks before the Supreme Court decided on integral decisions in the fight for marriage equality, HRC launched headfirst into a campaign that took on a life of its own.

Working from Coast to Coast

Across the country, HRC mobilized efforts to bring marriage equality to multiple states ahead of the eventual Supreme Court ruling in 2015. We launched one of our largest field operations in history in New York, deploying 30 full-time organizers and creating our New Yorkers for Marriage Equality campaign that would eventually lead to the state's passage of same-sex marriage in 2011. HRC also invested millions of dollars into state ballot initiatives in places like Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington.

Building Coalitions

After the Supreme Court announced it would hear the two cases in 2012, we immediately began gathering coalitions to drive a national conversation. Through both the Respect for Marriage Coalition and United for Marriage coalitions, we worked with like-minded organizations to show why the time for full equality had arrived. We also positioned elected officials at all levels of government - including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - at the forefront of our campaign.

Our Red Logo for Equality

In response to a growing conversation on social media, we decided to unveil a new iteration of our iconic logo by turning it red and pink in the name of love. We allowed Facebook users across the digital landscape to add filters to their own profiles and express their support for equality with their own networks.

Creating a Digital Wave

The launch of our red logo took HRC's digital presence to new heights as people worldwide embraced it as a call for change. Celebrities, companies, elected officials and countless more people added the HRC red logo to their profiles to spread awareness ahead of the Supreme Court decisions.

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The Journey to Marriage Equality in the United States - HRC

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The road to nationwide marriage equality was a long one, spanning decades of United States history and culminating in victory in June 2015. Throughout the long fight for marriage equality,...

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Lamana, Julie T.Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere

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Ward, Jesmyn.Salvage the bones : a novel

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Hurricane Katrina made landfall off the coast of Louisiana on August 29, 2005. It hit land as a Category 3 storm with winds reaching speeds as high as 120 miles per hour. Because of the ensuing destruction and loss of life, the storm is often considered one of the worst in U.S. history. An estimated 1,200 people died as a direct result of the storm, which also cost an estimated $108 billion in property damage, making it the costliest storm on record.

The devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina exposed a series of deep-rooted problems, including controversies over the federal government's response, difficulties in search-and-rescue efforts, and lack of preparedness for the storm, particularly with regard to the city's aging series of levees-50 of which failed during the storm, significantly flooding the low-lying city and causing much of the damage. Katrina's victims tended to be low income and African American in disproportionate numbers, and many of those who lost their homes faced years of hardship.

Ten years after the disaster, then-President Barack Obama said of Katrina, "What started out as a natural disaster became a man-made disaster-a failure of government to look out for its own citizens."

(What are hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons?)

The city of New Orleans and other coastal communities in Katrina's path remain significantly altered more than a decade after the storm, both physically and culturally. The damage was so extensive that some pundits had argued, controversially, that New Orleans should be permanently abandoned, even as the city vowed to rebuild.

The population of New Orleans fell by more than half in the year after Katrina, according to Data Center Research. As of this writing, the population had grown back to nearly 80 percent of where it was before the hurricane.

Timeline of a Storm

Katrina first formed as a tropical depression in Caribbean waters near the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. It officially reached hurricane status two days later, when it passed over southeastern Miami as a Category 1 storm. The tempest blew through Miami at 80 miles per hour, where it uprooted trees and killed two people. Katrina then weakened to a tropical storm, since hurricanes require warm ocean water to sustain speed and strength and begin to weaken over land. However, the storm then crossed back into the Gulf of Mexico, where it quickly regained strength and hurricane status. (Read a detailed timeline of how the storm developed.)

On August 27, the storm grew to a Category 3 hurricane. At its largest, Katrina was so wide its diameter stretched across the Gulf of Mexico.

Before the storm hit land, a mandatory evacuation was issued for the city of New Orleans, which had a population of more than 480,000 at the time. Tens of thousands of residents fled. But many stayed, particularly among the city's poorest residents and those who were elderly or lacked access to transportation. Many sheltered in their homes or made their way to the Superdome, the city's large sports arena, where conditions would soon deteriorate into hardship and chaos.

Katrina passed over the Gulf Coast early on the morning of August 29. Officials initially believed New Orleans was spared as most of the storm's worst initial impacts battered the coast toward the east, near Biloxi, Mississippi, where winds were the strongest and damage was extensive. But later that morning, a levee broke in New Orleans, and a surge of floodwater began pouring into the low-lying city. The waters would soon overwhelm additional levees.

The following day, Katrina weakened to a tropical storm, but severe flooding inhibited relief efforts in much of New Orleans. An estimated 80 percent of the city was soon underwater. By September 2, four days later, the city and surrounding areas were in full-on crisis mode, with many people and companion animals still stranded, and infrastructure and services collapsing. Congress issued $10 billion for disaster relief aid while much of the world began criticizing the U.S. government's response.

Geography of New Orleans

The city of New Orleans was at a disadvantage even before Hurricane Katrina hit, something experts had warned about for years, but it had limited success in changing policy. The region sits in a natural basin, and some of the city is below sea level so is particularly prone to flooding. Low-income communities tend to be in the lowest-lying areas.

Just south of the city, the powerful Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. During intense hurricanes, oncoming storms can push seawater onto land, creating what is known as a storm surge. Those forces typically cause the most hurricane-related fatalities. As Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans and surrounding parishes saw record storm surges as high as 19 feet.

Levees

Levees can be natural or manufactured. They are essentially walls that prevent waterways from overflowing and flooding nearby areas. New Orleans has been protected by levees since the French began inhabiting the region in the 17th century, but modern levees were authorized for construction in 1965 after Hurricane Betsy flooded much of the city. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers then built a complex system of 350 miles of levees. Yet a report by the

Corps released in 2006 concluded that insufficient funding, information, and poor construction had left the flood system vulnerable to failure.

Even before Katrina made landfall off the Gulf, the incoming storm surge had started to overwhelm the levees, spilling into residential areas. More than 50 levees would eventually fail before the storm subsided. While the winds of the storm itself caused major damage in the city of New Orleans, such as downed trees and buildings, studies conducted in the years since concluded that failed levees accounted for the worst impacts and most deaths.

The aftermath

An assessment from the state of Louisiana confirmed that just under half of the 1,200 deaths resulted from chronic disease exacerbated by the storm, and a third of the deaths were from drowning. Hurricane death tolls are debated, and for Katrina, counts can vary by as much as 600. Collected bodies must be examined for cause of death, and some argue that indirect hurricane deaths, like being unable to access medical care, should be counted in official numbers.

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest in U.S. history and left widespread economic impacts. Oil and gas industry operations were crippled after the storm and coastal communities that rely on tourism suffered from both loss of infrastructure and business and coastal erosion.

An estimated 400,000 people were permanently displaced by the storm. Demographic shifts followed in the wake of the hurricane. The lowest-income residents often found it more difficult to return. Some neighborhoods now have fewer residents under 18 as some families chose to permanently resettle in cities like Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta. The city is also now more racially diverse, with higher numbers of Latino and Asian residents, while a disproportionate number of African-Americans found it too difficult to return.

Rebuilding part of New Orleans's hurricane defenses cost $14.6 billion and was completed in 2018. More flood systems are pending construction, meaning the city is still at risk from another large storm. A series of flood walls, levees, and flood gates buttress the coast and banks of the Mississippi River.

Simulations modeled in the years after Katrina suggest that the storm may have been made worse by rising sea levels and warming temperatures. Scientists are concerned that hurricanes the size of Katrina will become more likely as the climate warms. Studies are increasingly showing that climate change makes hurricanes capable of carrying more moisture. At the same time, hurricanes are moving more slowly, spending more time deluging areas unprepared for major flooding.

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Hurricane Katrina was the costliest storm in U.S. history, and its effects are still felt today in New Orleans and coastal Louisiana.

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Floridians might have been spared the worst damage inflicted by Hurricane Dorian, but there were many storms over the past 10 years that caused significant destruction. In fact, some Floridians are continuing to deal with the fallout from hurricanes that struck in 2016 and 2017.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, there were 158 recorded named storms in the Atlantic Ocean during the past decade. This worked out to around 10 more than in the decade before that (the 00s). As the Sentinel noted, not all named storms turned into hurricanes, since Tropical Storms are also named. However, about 72 tropical storms developed into at least a Category 1 hurricane (which have sustained winds of at least 74 miles per hour). This total was one fewer than the number of hurricanes in the first decade of the century, which came in at 73.

Fewer Hurricanes Make Landfall-But Damage is Still Intense

In the 2010s, only five hurricanes made landfall in Florida, slightly down from the eight that hit our state in the 00s. However, who can forget the hurricanes that did hit the United States? For example:

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused devastation to the Northeastern part of the United States when it was an "extratropical" system after combining with cold air. Sandy caused storm surge in New York of roughly 13 feet and had maximum sustained winds of 98 miles per hour. Sandy killed 147 people and did about $70 billion in damage. Fortunately, Florida was spared.

Hurricane Matthew in 2016 caused about 600 deaths, most of which occurred in Haiti. It also caused $10 billion in property damage. At the time, it was the tenth-costliest hurricane. Two people in Florida died from the storm, one of whom passed after a tree fell on her. In Volusia County, 467 homes received major damage and about 69 were destroyed.

Hurricane Harvey in 2017 caused $125 billion in damage, which was the second costliest in US history, behind only Katrina. It also killed 68 people.

Hurricane Irma, also in 2017, hit the Caribbean as a Category 5 hurricane and Florida as a Category 3. Irma killed 47 people in total, seven of whom in Florida. Around 6 million people had to be evacuated because of the storm.

Hurricane Michael made landfall in 2018, causing 16 direct and 43 indirect deaths, all in Florida. Many communities in our state are continuing to dig out from its effects.

Of course, Dorian also devastated the Caribbean, causing at least 70 deaths and billions of dollars in damage, though Florida was spared.

Do You Need Help with a Hurricane Insurance Claim?

The new decade should see plenty of storm activity, which means that homeowners will need to be prepared to make claims with their insurers. At Bundza & Rodriguez, P.A., our Daytona Beach hurricane insurance claim lawyers are happy to assist any way we can, from filing an initial claim to bringing an appeal or a lawsuit. Reach out to our lawyers today, 386-252-5170 to schedule a free consultation.

Resource:

orlandosentinel.com/weather/hurricane/os-ne-hurricanes-last-decade-florida-20191231-mv3tznl4dvbe7lwjdufotacoai-story.html

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A Look Back at the Worst Hurricanes of the Past Decade

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According to the Orlando Sentinel, there were 158 recorded named storms in the Atlantic Ocean during the past decade.

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It is dynamic positioning that

Allows a semi-submersible the

Ability to hover there over

The well. It is a thirty-six inch tube,

A casing, that extends down to allow

The drill and bit to be rotated there;

The drill then spudding in; the seafloor, dark,

And giving way. It is a thick column

Of drilling mud that keeps natural gas

And oil beneath the seafloor while the well

Is capped and it is a cement that

Fills in the casing so the drill pipe stays

Unmoving, stable, in this ever moving sea.

It is a sort of drilling mud that is

Then pumped through the drill pipe and out through

The drill bit then up through the casing and

Then back up to the oil rig in the space

Between the drill pipe and the inner wall.

It is a blowout preventer, a series of valves

That seal off the excessive pressure should

The wellhead kick then blowout. There are all

These variables. Various valves. Pressures.

Buoyancies. Mixes of cements. Currents. Claims.

Humans. Bow spring. Top plug. Shoe track. Floatshoe.

I could go on and on here calling the

New muses of innovation, common

Vocabulary, that covers over the

Elaborate simplicity of this,

This well, Macondo well, was drilled by

Deepwater Horizon and it went through

Five thousand feet, through the abyssal zones,

The epipelagic with its sunlight

The mesopelagic with its twilight

The bathypelagic with its midnight

Then where the sea meets floor, the deep ocean,

A blowout preventer there with the fish,

The darker fish, the large detritevars

That feed on the drizzle of the moulted

Exoskeletons, the carnivores, snipe eels

Big lantern fish, and zooplankton, corals.

This well then went on reaching for the oil

Another thirteen thousand feet. When it hits

The pay zone, down through it, down deeper, deep.

This well, Macondo well, was exploratory.

This story then begins with other wells,

But I will tell the story of This Well:

In April twenty ten, the setting south

And east of Louisiana's long coast.

It begins with a round of tests, some done

And some avoided. An environmental

Impact and blowout plan declared to be

Not necessary. Drilling easy. Then

On April twenty, bled off five barrels

Of fluid, reduced drill pressure. No flow.

At noon, a drill pipe goes in hole so as

To begin mud displacement. Seawater

Then pumped in to displace mud. Kill line

Not bled. It goes on like this. Partial lab

Results, a circulation pressure that

Did not yet match the modeling results

And yet cement job pumped. Fluid returns

Observed. Bottom plug ruptured. Still the

Cement is pumped so it bumps top wiper plug

At twelve thirty. Then two pressure tests.

The drill pipe run in hole to eight thousand

And three hundred and sixty seven feet.

So mud displacement starts, the seawater

Is pumped, then the spacer, then the fresh

Water. The kill line opened and pressure then

Decreased. Drill pipe pressure increased.

The kill line shut in. Mud offloading done.

It goes on. Drill pipe pressure. Kill line open.

Then drill pipe pressure high again. Then sea-

Water is pumped. Kill line full. Kill line

Opened, bled to mini trip tank. Flow

Is stopped. Kill line monitored. It

Is then open. No flow. Considered

A good test. Blowout preventer open-

Ed, seawater then pumped down the drill

Pipe to displace the mud and spacer from

The riser. It is nine o'clock. The flow

Out from the well increased. Trip tank then

Emptied. Then fluids discharged overboard. Pumps

Restarted. Drill pipe pressure on constant

Increase. It goes on like this. Pump number

Two started. Pressure spike. Then pumps two, three,

And four are shut down. Pump one still online.

Then pumps three, four restarted. Pressure build-

Ing, pump two. Pumps shut down. First pump three, four,

Then one. Then drill pipe pressure fluctuates.

Increases. Then decreases. Then again

Increases. Then held briefly, then again

Decreases. A repair begins. At some

Moment hydrocarbons enter the bot-

Tom of the well undetected and rise

Inside the wellbore, growing quickly as

They meet the lower pressure of the sur-

Face, heavy drill mud, other fluids, sea-

Water, all pushed by the rising and

Expanding gases followed by more,

By high pressure oil, gases, other flu-

Ids, all there rising, swelling in

The wellbore, all there, pushing from the

Reservoir. It is almost at ten

O'clock when mud begins its overflow-

Ing of the line and then on the rig floor.

It is almost at ten o'clock when mud

Then shoots up through the derrick. It is almost

At ten o'clock, diverter shut so that

The gas and drilling fluid could be routed

To the baffle plates, the poorboy degass-

Er, then the lower annual prev-

Enter is activated. The drill press-

Ure, the volumes of gases, fluids, drill-

Ing mud, seawater, then is steadily in-

Creasing. And it begins again. Or be-

Gins some more. First as mud. A mud that roar-

Ing, rained. Then the gas as it discharge-

Ing, hissing, the poorboy degasser fill-

Ing. Next the first gas alarm then the oth-

Ers. It was then almost close to ten o'

Clock, still when next a roaring noise, a vib-

Ration, engines began rapid increase-

Ing as also the drill pipe pressure rap-

Idly increasing as the rig then los-

Ing power, shut down processes then fail-

Ing. First explosion on five seconds aft-

Er. Then explosion again, ten sec-

Onds later. It was not yet ten

O'clock when the mayday call was first made.

The Deepwater Horizon gutted stem

To stern. What happens next ends with eleven

Dead. The rig tethered still to the deepwell.

The shrapnel. The lightbulbs then popping. The

Heat. Hot fireballs. The lifeboats smoke filled ovens.

Some lifeboats left, not yet full. Those left

Behind then jumped in to oil-covered,

Still water and so swam away. Some died:

Jason Anderson. Bubba Burkeen. Shane

M. Roshto. Donald Clark. Wyatt Kemp. Karl

Dale Kleppinger. Gordon Lewis Jones. Keith

Blair Manuel. Dewey Revette. Adam

Weise. Stephen Ray Curtis. I will not tell

You their lives, their loves, their young children, their

Relationship to oil. Our oil. The well

Exploded. They then died. Some swam away.

Some floated away in boats. Donald Vidrine,

Curt Kuchta, Jimmy Wayne Harrell. I did

Not die. I watched it then burn on a

Flat screen. Anthony Brian Hayward, Steven

L. Newman, David Lesar watched. And

Susan Birnbaum too, watching.

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Dynamic Positioning by Juliana Spahr | Poetry Foundation

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Members of the bipartisan commission created to investigate the spill say Congress and the Trump administration have failed to take safety seriously.

The Deepwater Horizon platform on April 21, 2010. Credit... Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Shortly before 10 p.m. on April 20, 2010, an explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, unleashing the worst offshore oil spill in United States history and triggering what were supposed to be systemic changes to ensure such a disaster could never happen again.

Now, a decade later, all seven members of the bipartisan national commission set up to find the roots of the disaster and prevent a repeat said many of their recommendations were never taken seriously. As drilling moves farther offshore and deeper underwater, they said, another spill of equally disastrous proportions is possible.

All seven members, in fact, agreed that the United States was only marginally better prepared than it was the night eleven people died in the fiery blowout that released more than 3 million barrels of oil into the waters off the coast of Louisiana.

"No, I don't think we're prepared for another spill of that magnitude," said William K. Reilly, the commission's Republican co-chairman, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under the first President George Bush.

That view is not shared by oil industry leaders or members of the Trump administration, who said government oversight and prevention technology had improved significantly over the past decade, making the likelihood of another major spill remote.

BP, which operated the Deepwater Horizon through a contractor, said the accident "forever changed" the company.

"In 2010, we promised to help the Gulf of Mexico recover, become a safer, better company, and report on our progress," the company said in a statement. "The lessons we've learned and the changes we've made - from tougher standards to better oversight - are at the core of becoming a safer company."

But in lengthy interviews this month, every member of the bipartisan panel, the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, accused the Trump administration of putting American waters, coastlines and wildlife in harm's way by weakening safety and environmental regulations while pushing to expand oil drilling in nearly all American waters.

They also accused Congress of a near-complete failure to adopt their recommendations on drilling safety.

Only the oil industry earned high marks from the commissioners, who credited companies with making substantial improvements in well containment capabilities over the decade.

"We are slightly better prepared than we were ten years ago but nowhere near where we need to be," said Bob Graham, a Democrat and former governor and senator from Florida who led the commission with Mr. Reilly.

Frances Beinecke, a former president of the Natural Resources Defense Council who served on the commission before it was disbanded in 2011, said, "Ten years later the only thing that is really advanced is having the industry much more serious about well containment."

Offshore drilling collapsed after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but a decade later it is back and going strong. Production has surpassed pre-accident levels by a few hundred thousand barrels a day, and oil companies brought seven new projects online in 2019. Nine more were expected this year, though the recent collapse of oil prices, largely driven by the coronavirus pandemic, is forcing companies to rethink their investments.

Last year's production growth of 126,000 barrels a day brought the Gulf region's production to a record 2 million barrels a day, out of total U.S. production of 13 million barrels a day. After West Texas, the offshore Gulf is the country's second-most-important oil region.

The beaches are back as well, but beneath the surface the damage has not been repaired. In one recent study scientists sampled 2,000 fish in the Gulf of Mexico and found all of them contaminated with oil.

At the same time, commissioners said, offshore drilling safety measures put in place after the disaster have been weakened.

In May, the Trump administration announced a rule that removed some of the safety requirements imposed by the Obama administration, which industry had complained were burdensome and costly. The new rule reduced the frequency of safety testing for blowout preventers, which are the last-ditch defense against huge gushers. It also gave industry more leeway in determine the range of pressure in a well that is considered safe for drilling.

Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore drillers, said the new rules allowed industry more flexibility to meet safety requirements with emerging technology. He said none of the changes had made U.S. waters less safe.

Donald Boesch, a commissioner on the Deepwater panel who is also president emeritus of University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science, said the Trump administration's argument that industry had made substantial enough improvements to warrant some rollbacks had merit. But he also said that the Department of Interior had dismissed staff objections to make it easier to finish writing the rule.

"I'm a little nervous about the times we're in," Dr. Boesch said, adding, "the industry is trying to save and reduce costs, and you have the government backing off on the safety responsibility."

He and other commissioners said the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which the Obama administration created within the Department of Interior after the Deepwater Horizon accident to focus solely on enforcement, was focusing more on increasing oil production and reducing regulations than on its safety mission.

Congress, they noted, failed to pass legislation that would permanently secure the safety bureau as independent from agencies aimed promoting oil production.

Cherry A. Murray, a commission member and the former dean of Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, said officials in the Obama administration "did as much as they could" to follow the panel's recommendations in developing a safety agency. Congress, however, "did zip," she said.

Sandy Day, a spokesman for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, said the perception that the agency is overly focused on production was "simply untrue." He called revisions to the well-control rule "common sense changes that were based on the best available science, best practices and technological innovations of the past decade."

One of the commission's key recommendations was legislation to protect offshore oil and gas whistle blowers who expose health and safety violations on rigs. Congress has yet to pass a bill.

The commission advised Congress to increase the time the federal government had to review offshore exploration plans, and to give the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration a formal role in those deliberations. They also recommended that Congress require the oil and gas industry to pay fees that support environmental science and regulatory review. None of those measures have been implemented.

It told Congress to strengthen the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, the bedrock environmental law that requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental impacts of major federal actions. The commission found that the use of "categorical exclusions," in which officials determine that a project has no significant impact on the environment and does not need a thorough analysis, allowed the BP well in the explosion to avoid scrutiny before the accident.

Congress never acted on that recommendation, and now the Trump administration is moving to weaken NEPA, including allowing more of these types of exclusions. The administration also has moved to loosen the liability of oil companies that kill migratory birds in spills. More than one million birds were killed in the four years following the blowout, for which BP paid more $100 million in fines. Once the relaxed rule on bird deaths is finalized, companies would no longer be held responsible for unintended killings.

The one major piece of legislation Congress did pass, the Restore Act, directed 80 percent of Clean Water Act fines from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to coastal restoration.

"Thank God they did that," said Frances A. Ulmer, chairwoman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. "It has sent a phenomenal amount of money into ecosystem restoration."

Terry D. Garcia, a former deputy administrator of NOAA and a member of the Deepwater Horizon commission, said the United States was actually less safe from a major spill than it was ten years ago because of the government's unwillingness to plan for low-probability, high-risk disasters.

"This experience, the one we're going through right now, I think should give people pause," he said.

"We very well could have a disaster equal to or greater than the one ten years ago, and that would be a tragedy because we know what can happen, and yet we didn't take the steps that were necessary to address that risk," he said. "It will probably be our epitaph."

Clifford Krauss contributed from Houston.

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Ten Years After Deepwater Horizon, U.S. Is Still Vulnerable to Catastrophic Spills (Published 2020)

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Members of the bipartisan commission created to investigate the spill say Congress and the Trump administration have failed to take safety seriously. WASHINGTON - Shortly before 10 p.m.

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Oil Spill | Gulf of Mexico | April 2010

What Happened?

On April 20, 2010, an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion, which killed 11 men, caused the rig to sink and started a catastrophic oil leak from the well. Before it was capped three months later, approximately 134 million gallons of oil had spilled into the Gulf, the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

What Were the Impacts?

The trustees Government officials acting on behalf of the public when there is injury to, destruction of, loss of, or threat to natural resources. assessed injuries to natural resources -such as fish, bottom-dwelling organisms, nearshore ecosystems, birds, sea turtles, and marine mammals-and lost recreation resulting from the spill.

Through the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) Investigation performed by trustees to identify injuries to natural resources caused by oil spills, hazardous substance releases, and grounding incidents in National Marine Sanctuaries, and plan restoration activities. The goal of NRDA is to restore natural resources and compensate the public for lost recreational use., we evaluated the type and amount of restoration needed in order to return the Gulf to the condition it would have been in before the spill and to compensate the public for the natural resource services that were injured or lost. The Deepwater Horizon spill resulted in the largest natural resource damage assessment ever undertaken.

What's Happening Now?

In 2011, one year after the spill, BP agreed to provide up to $1 billion toward early restoration projects in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, we have worked with the public and BP to identify and implement early restoration projects.

We conducted dozens of public meetings and received thousands of comments which have helped us shape each phase of early restoration. These projects allowed restoration of the Gulf to begin immediately.

On October 5, 2015, we proposed a comprehensive, integrated, ecosystem restoration plan to address impacts from the spill to the Gulf of Mexico. The draft plan allocated up to $8.8 billion for restoration from a proposed settlement with BP. It was based on our thorough assessment of impacts to the Gulf's natural resources and the services they provide.

On April 4, 2016, the court approved a settlement with BP for natural resource injuries stemming from the spill. This settlement concludes the largest civil settlement ever awarded. We will now begin implementing restoration as laid out in the Trustees' final comprehensive restoration plan. Under this settlement, BP will pay the Trustees up to $8.8 billion for restoration to address natural resource injuries.
For more information, visit the Gulf Spill Restoration website.

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Deepwater Horizon | Oil Spills | Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program

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Oil Spill | Gulf of Mexico | April 2010 What Happened? On April 20, 2010, an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion, which killed 11 men, caused the rig to sink and started a catastrophic oil leak from the well.

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When did the Deepwater Horizon oil spill happen?

Who owned the rig responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

What caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

How did the Deepwater Horizon oil spill affect birds?

Deepwater Horizon oil spill, largest marine oil spill in history, caused by an April 20, 2010, explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig-located in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 41 miles (66 km) off the coast of Louisiana-and its subsequent sinking on April 22.

The explosion

The Deepwater Horizon rig, owned and operated by offshore-oil-drilling company Transocean and leased by oil company BP, was situated in the Macondo oil prospect in the Mississippi Canyon, a valley in the continental shelf. The oil well over which it was positioned was located on the seabed 4,993 feet (1,522 metres) below the surface and extended approximately 18,000 feet (5,486 metres) into the rock. On the night of April 20 a surge of natural gas blasted through a concrete core recently installed by contractor Halliburton in order to seal the well for later use. It later emerged through documents released by Wikileaks that a similar incident had occurred on a BP-owned rig in the Caspian Sea in September 2008. Both cores were likely too weak to withstand the pressure because they were composed of a concrete mixture that used nitrogen gas to accelerate curing.

Once released by the fracture of the core, the natural gas traveled up the Deepwater rig's riser to the platform, where it ignited, killing 11 workers and injuring 17. The rig capsized and sank on the morning of April 22, rupturing the riser, through which drilling mud had been injected in order to counteract the upward pressure of oil and natural gas. Without any opposing force, oil began to discharge into the gulf. The volume of oil escaping the damaged well-originally estimated by BP to be about 1,000 barrels per day-was thought by U.S. government officials to have peaked at more than 60,000 barrels per day.

Leaking oil

Although BP attempted to activate the rig's blowout preventer (BOP), a fail-safe mechanism designed to close the channel through which oil was drawn, the device malfunctioned. Forensic analysis of the BOP completed the following year determined that a set of massive blades known as blind shear rams-designed to slice through the pipe carrying oil-had malfunctioned because the pipe had bent under the pressure of the rising gas and oil. (A 2014 report by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board claimed that the blind shear rams had activated sooner than previously thought and may have actually punctured the pipe.)

Disasters of Historic Proportion

Efforts in May to place a containment dome over the largest leak in the broken riser were thwarted by the buoyant action of gas hydrates-gas molecules in an ice matrix-formed by the reaction of natural gas and cold water. When an attempt to employ a "top kill," whereby drilling mud was pumped into the well to stanch the flow of oil, also failed, BP in early June turned to an apparatus called the Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) cap. With the damaged riser shorn from the LMRP-the top segment of the BOP-the cap was lowered into place. Though fitted loosely over the BOP and allowing some oil to escape, the cap enabled BP to siphon approximately 15,000 barrels of oil per day to a tanker. The addition of an ancillary collection system comprising several devices, also tapped into the BOP, increased the collection rate to approximately 25,000 barrels of oil a day.

In early July the LMRP cap was removed for several days so that a more permanent seal could be installed; this capping stack was in place by July 12. Though the leak had slowed, it was estimated by a government-commissioned panel of scientists that 4,900,000 barrels of oil had already leaked into the gulf. Only about 800,000 barrels had been captured. On August 3 BP conducted a "static kill," a procedure in which drilling mud was pumped into the well through the BOP. Though similar to the failed top kill, mud could be injected at much lower pressures during the static kill because of the stabilizing influence of the capping stack. The defective BOP and the capping stack were removed in early September and replaced by a functioning BOP.

The success of these procedures cleared the way for a "bottom kill," considered to be the most likely means of permanently sealing the leak. This entailed pumping cement through a channel-known as a relief well-that paralleled and eventually intersected the original well. Construction of two such wells had begun in May. On September 17 the bottom kill maneuver was successfully executed through the first relief well. The second had been intended to serve as a backup and was not completed. Two days later, following a series of pressure tests, it was announced that the well was completely sealed.

Claims by several research groups that subsurface plumes of dispersed hydrocarbons had been detected in May were initially dismissed by BP and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). However, it was verified in June that the plumes were in fact from the Deepwater spill. The effect of the microscopic oil droplets on the ecosystem was unknown, though their presence, along with that of a layer of oil several inches thick discovered on portions of the seafloor in September, cast doubt on earlier predictions about the speed with which the discharged oil would dissipate. Bacteria that had adapted to consuming naturally occurring gas and oil seeping from the seabed were thought to have consumed a portion of it.

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Deepwater Horizon oil spill | Summary, Effects, Cause, Clean Up, & Facts

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Deepwater Horizon oil spill, largest marine oil spill in history, caused by an April 20, 2010, explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig-located in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 41 miles (66 km) off the coast of Louisiana-and its subsequent sinking on April 22.

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Japan Impacts from the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake & Tsunami

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How an Earthquake in Japan Helped Shape California's Plan for the Next Tsunami

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On March 11, 2011, Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its recorded history.

Subjects

Earth Science, Oceanography, Geography, Physical Geography

On March 11, 2011, Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its recorded history. The earthquake struck below the North Pacific, 130 kilometers (81 miles) east of Sendai, the largest city in the Tohoku region, a northern part of the island of Honshu.

The Tohoku earthquake caused a tsunami. A tsunami-Japanese for "harbor wave"-is a series of powerful waves caused by the displacement of a large body of water. Most tsunamis, like the one that formed off Tohoku, are triggered by underwater tectonic activity, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The Tohoku tsunami produced waves up to 40 meters (132 feet) high, More than 450,000 people became homeless as a result of the tsunami. More than 15,500 people died. The tsunami also severely crippled the infrastructure of the country.

In addition to the thousands of destroyed homes, businesses, roads, and railways, the tsunami caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The Fukushima nuclear disaster released toxic, radioactive materials into the environment and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes and businesses.

Media Credits

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Writer

National Geographic Society

Producer

National Geographic Society

other

Last Updated

October 19, 2023

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On March 11, 2011, Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its recorded history.

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What was the magnitude of the earthquake that caused the tsunami that devastated coastal areas of Japan in 2011?

Where was the epicenter of the Great Sendai Earthquake?

What was the death toll of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in 2011?

What effects did the Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011 have?

By what names is the Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011 known?

Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, severe natural disaster that occurred in northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. The event began with a powerful earthquake off the northeastern coast of Honshu, Japan's main island, which caused widespread damage on land and initiated a series of large tsunami waves that devastated many coastal areas of the country, most notably in the Tōhoku region (northeastern Honshu). The tsunami also instigated a major nuclear accident at a power station along the coast.

The earthquake and tsunami

The magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck at 2:46 pm. (The early estimate of magnitude 8.9 was later revised upward.) The epicentre was located some 80 miles (130 km) east of the city of Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, and the focus occurred at a depth of 18.6 miles (about 30 km) below the floor of the western Pacific Ocean. The earthquake was caused by the rupture of a stretch of the subduction zone associated with the Japan Trench, which separates the Eurasian Plate from the subducting Pacific Plate. (Some geologists argue that this portion of the Eurasian Plate is actually a fragment of the North American Plate called the Okhotsk microplate.) A part of the subduction zone measuring approximately 190 miles (300 km) long by 95 miles (150 km) wide lurched as much as 164 feet (50 metres) to the east-southeast and thrust upward about 33 feet (10 metres). The March 11 temblor was felt as far away as Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia; Kao-hsiung, Taiwan; and Beijing, China. It was preceded by several foreshocks, including a magnitude-7.2 event centred approximately 25 miles (40 km) away from the epicentre of the main quake. Hundreds of aftershocks, dozens of magnitude 6.0 or greater and two of magnitude 7.0 or greater, followed in the days and weeks after the main quake. (Nearly two years later, on December 7, 2012, a magnitude-7.3 tremor originated from the same plate boundary region. The quake caused no injuries and little damage.) The March 11, 2011, earthquake was the strongest to strike the region since the beginning of record keeping in the late 19th century, and it is considered one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded. It was later reported that a satellite orbiting at the outer edge of Earth's atmosphere that day had detected infrasonics (very low-frequency sound waves) from the quake.

The sudden horizontal and vertical thrusting of the Pacific Plate, which has been slowly advancing under the Eurasian Plate near Japan, displaced the water above and spawned a series of highly destructive tsunami waves. A wave measuring some 33 feet high inundated the coast and flooded parts of the city of Sendai, including its airport and the surrounding countryside. According to some reports, one wave penetrated some 6 miles (10 km) inland after causing the Natori River, which separates Sendai from the city of Natori to the south, to overflow. Damaging tsunami waves struck the coasts of Iwate prefecture, just north of Miyagi prefecture, and Fukushima, Ibaraki, and Chiba, the prefectures extending along the Pacific coast south of Miyagi. In addition to Sendai, other communities hard-hit by the tsunami included Kamaishi and Miyako in Iwate; Ishinomaki, Kesennuma, and Shiogama in Miyagi; and Kitaibaraki and Hitachinaka in Ibaraki. As the floodwaters retreated back to the sea, they carried with them enormous quantities of debris, as well as thousands of victims caught in the deluge. Large stretches of land were left submerged under seawater, particularly in lower-lying areas.

The earthquake triggered tsunami warnings throughout the Pacific basin. The tsunami raced outward from the epicentre at speeds that approached about 500 miles (800 km) per hour. It generated waves 11 to 12 feet (3.3 to 3.6 metres) high along the coasts of Kauai and Hawaii in the Hawaiian Islands chain and 5-foot (1.5-metre) waves along the island of Shemya in the Aleutian Islands chain. Several hours later 9-foot (2.7-metre) tsunami waves struck the coasts of California and Oregon in North America. Finally, some 18 hours after the quake, waves roughly 1 foot (0.3 metre) high reached the coast of Antarctica and caused a portion of the Sulzberger Ice Shelf to break off its outer edge.

Disasters of Historic Proportion

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Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011 | Facts & Death Toll

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Japan earthquake and tsunami, severe natural disaster that occurred in northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, and killed at least 20,000 people. The event began with a powerful earthquake off the coast of Honshu, Japan's main island, which initiated a series of large tsunami waves that devastated many coastal areas.

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Haiti In Ruins: A Look Back At The 2010 Earthquake

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NPR photographer David Gilkey and correspondent Jason Beaubien were among those who rushed to Haiti immediately after the quake.

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The earthquake

The earthquake hit at 4:53 pm some 15 miles (25 km) southwest of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The initial shock registered a magnitude of 7.0 and was soon followed by two aftershocks of magnitudes 5.9 and 5.5. More aftershocks occurred in the following days, including another one of magnitude 5.9 that struck on January 20 at Petit Goâve, a town some 35 miles (55 km) west of Port-au-Prince. Haiti had not been hit by an earthquake of such enormity since the 18th century, the closest in force being a 1984 shock of magnitude 6.9. A magnitude-8.0 earthquake had struck the Dominican Republic in 1946.

Geologists initially blamed the earthquake on the movement of the Caribbean tectonic plate eastward along the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden (EPG) strike-slip fault system. However, when no surface deformation was observed, the rupturing of the main strand of the fault system was ruled out as a cause. The EPG fault system makes up a transform boundary that separates the Gonâve microplate-the fragment of the North American Plate upon which Haiti is situated-from the Caribbean Plate.

The earthquake was generated by contractional deformation along the Léogâne fault, a small hidden thrust fault discovered underneath the city of Léogâne. The Léogâne fault, which cannot be observed at the surface, descends northward at an oblique angle away from the EPG fault system, and many geologists contend that the earthquake resulted from the slippage of rock upward across its plane of fracture.

Occurring at a depth of 8.1 miles (13 km), the temblor was fairly shallow, which increased the degree of shaking at the Earth's surface. The shocks were felt throughout Haiti and the Dominican Republic as well as in parts of nearby Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. The densely populated region around Port-au-Prince, located on the Gulf of Gonâve, was among those most heavily affected. Farther south the city of Jacmel also sustained significant damage, and to the west the city of Léogâne, even closer to the epicentre than Port-au-Prince, was essentially leveled.

A country in ruins

The collapsed buildings defining the landscape of the disaster area came as a consequence of Haiti's lack of building codes. Without adequate reinforcement, the buildings disintegrated under the force of the quake, killing or trapping their occupants. In Port-au-Prince the cathedral and the National Palace were both heavily damaged, as were the United Nations headquarters, national penitentiary, and parliament building. The city, already beset by a strained and inadequate infrastructure and still recovering from the two tropical storms and two hurricanes of August-September 2008, was ill-equipped to deal with such a disaster. Other affected areas of the country-faced with comparable weaknesses-were similarly unprepared.

In the aftermath of the quake, efforts by citizens and international aid organizations to provide medical assistance, food, and water to survivors were hampered by the failure of the electric power system (which already was unreliable), loss of communication lines, and roads blocked with debris. A week after the event, little aid had reached beyond Port-au-Prince; after another week, supplies were being distributed only sporadically to other urban areas. Operations to rescue those trapped under the wreckage-which had freed over 100 people-had mostly ceased two weeks into the crisis, as hope that anyone could have survived for that length of time without food or water began to fade. However, there were still occasional recoveries of people who had managed to survive such confinement for weeks by rationing the meagre supplies available to them.

A people in crisis

It was estimated that some three million people were affected by the quake-nearly one-third of the country's total population. Of these, over one million were left homeless in the immediate aftermath. In the devastated urban areas, the displaced were forced to squat in ersatz cities composed of found materials and donated tents. Looting-restrained in the early days following the quake-became more prevalent in the absence of sufficient supplies and was exacerbated in the capital by the escape of several thousand prisoners from the damaged penitentiary. In the second week of the aftermath, many urbanites began streaming into outlying areas, either of their own volition or as a result of governmental relocation programs engineered to alleviate crowded and unsanitary conditions.

Because many hospitals had been rendered unusable, survivors were forced to wait days for treatment and, with morgues quickly reaching capacity, corpses were stacked in the streets. The onset of decay forced the interment of many bodies in mass graves, and recovery of those buried under the rubble was impeded by a shortage of heavy-lifting equipment, making death tolls difficult to determine. Figures released by Haitian government officials at the end of March placed the death toll at 222,570 people, though there was significant disagreement over the exact figure, and some estimated that nearly a hundred thousand more had perished. In January 2011, Haitian officials announced the revised figure of 316,000 deaths. The draft of a report commissioned by the U.S. government and made public in May 2011 drastically revised the estimate downward to no more than 85,000. Officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) later acknowledged inconsistencies in data acquisition. Given the difficulty of observing documentation procedures in the rush to dispose of the dead, it was considered unlikely that a definitive total would ever be established.

Further deaths occurred as serious injuries went untreated in the absence of medical staff and supplies. The orphans created by these mass mortalities-as well as those whose parents had died prior to the quake-were left vulnerable to abuse and human trafficking. Though adoptions of Haitian children by foreign nationals-particularly in the United States-were expedited, the process was slowed by the efforts of Haitian and foreign authorities to ensure that the children did not have living relatives, as orphanages had often temporarily accommodated the children of the destitute.

Because the infrastructure of the country's computer network was largely unaffected, electronic media emerged as a useful mode for connecting those separated by the quake and for coordinating relief efforts. Survivors who were able to access the Internet-and friends and relatives abroad-took to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook in search of information on those missing in the wake of the catastrophe. Feeds from these sites also assisted aid organizations in constructing maps of the areas affected and in determining where to channel resources. The many Haitians lacking Internet access were able to contribute updates via text messaging on mobile phones.

The general disorder created by the earthquake-combined with the destruction of the country's electoral headquarters and the death of UN officials working in concert with the Haitian electoral council-prompted Haitian Pres. René Préval to defer legislative elections that had been scheduled for the end of February. Préval's term in office was set to end the following year.

As the spring rainy season and summer hurricane season approached with reconstruction efforts having made little progress, residents of tent settlements were encouraged by aid agencies to construct more-substantial dwellings using tarpaulins and, later, donated lumber and sheet metal. Though some provisional housing was erected before the onset of inclement weather, many persons remained in tents and other shelters that provided scant protection from the elements. Compounding the problems in the increasingly disorganized encampments within Port-au-Prince was the return of many people who, months before, had initially retreated to the countryside only to find little opportunity for employment.

Two years later, though roughly half of the rubble littering Port-au-Prince had been cleared and some damaged residences had been made habitable, more than half a million people remained in tents, many of which had deteriorated significantly. That number dropped to about 360,000 by the third anniversary. The decrease was partly due to a Canadian-sponsored program that provided grants to some of the nearly 30,000 residents of the most-conspicuous camp-located near the collapsed presidential palace on the Champs de Mars-which allowed them to find rental housing or repair existing structures. Although that area was cleared by July 2012, countrywide some 500 camps still remained at the end of the year. By 2014 the number of camps had been more than halved, though some 100,000 people remained without permanent housing. While the number of camps continued to diminish, more than 62,000 people were still displaced in early 2016.

Many who left the camps merely relocated to outgrowths of the existing slums surrounding Port-au-Prince. Others crowded into undamaged homes owned by extended family members or friends or returned to damaged structures, more than 200,000 of which were either marked for demolition or required major repairs. Efforts to level the worst such buildings, some of which precariously gripped the rims of ravines, were hampered by irate residents who refused to leave. The capital remained without power for significant stretches during a given day because of stalled work on the electricity grid. In addition, less than one-third of the population was steadily employed. Conditions were further exacerbated by damage to crops and settlements by tropical weather events, notably Superstorm Sandy in October 2012.

In October 2010, cases of cholera began to surface around the Artibonite River. The river-the longest on the island and a major source of drinking water there-had been contaminated with fecal matter carrying a South Asian strain of cholera bacteria. Suspicion that Nepalese UN peacekeeping forces stationed near the river were the likely source of the outbreak was validated by the leak of a report by a French epidemiologist in December. The report cited the absence of cholera in Haiti during the previous decade and the emergence of a parallel outbreak of cholera in Kathmandu, the city from which the troops had departed Nepal. The epidemic reached the tent cities of Port-au-Prince in November 2010, and by 2016 it had sickened some 770,000 people and proved fatal to more than 9,200. A 2016 report by the organization Doctors Without Borders claimed that cases of cholera had likely been significantly underreported.

In November 2011 several organizations filed claims against the United Nations asking that it take responsibility for the outbreak, install new water and waste-management systems, and compensate those who fell ill or lost relatives to cholera. In December 2012 the UN, while not acknowledging that its troops had been vectors of the disease, announced that it would fund a program proposed by the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic to rid Hispaniola of cholera by instituting new sanitation and vaccination measures. Critics noted, however, that the proposed financial scheme for the project hinged largely on previously promised monies not yet in hand. The UN asserted in February 2013 that it would not receive compensation claims related to the outbreak, citing its convention on privileges and immunities. In October 2013 a U.S.-based group, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, filed a lawsuit in New York City against the UN, seeking compensation on behalf of Haitians affected by the epidemic. The U.S. Department of Justice asserted that the UN was immune from prosecution in 2014. In an October 2015 letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, a group of UN human rights experts excoriated the body for using legal loopholes to avoid taking responsibility for the epidemic and thereby undermining its own credibility. The following year the UN finally admitted to playing a role in starting the epidemic, though it did not say that the organization had caused the outbreak. The announcement came after Ban received a report from a UN adviser who claimed that the epidemic "would not have broken out but for the actions of the United Nations." In addition, the adviser urged the UN to provide compensation to the victims. However, there was no indication that the organization would drop its claim of legal immunity.

The election to choose Préval's successor as president took place in November 2010 after a 10-month delay. Voter turnout was low, and allegations of electoral fraud were widespread. A runoff election was held on March 20, 2011, between the top two candidates: popular musician Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat, a legal scholar and the wife of a former president of Haiti. Election observers noted fewer instances of fraud in the runoff, and voter turnout was higher. On April 21 it was announced that Martelly had won the election with some two-thirds of the vote. The political instability created by the quake resulted in the postponement of municipal and senatorial elections scheduled for 2011 and 2012, respectively. Haiti's parliament was dissolved in January 2015, having lost its mandate to govern. Parliamentary elections were held in August 2015, and a second round, alongside a presidential election, was held in October 2015. However, allegations of fraud led to demands for a presidential runoff. Originally slated for December 2015, the runoff was canceled. Following the establishment of the new parliament in January 2016, Martelly agreed to leave office in February, and an interim president was sworn in that month.

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2010 Haiti earthquake | Magnitude, Damage, Map, & Facts

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2010 Haiti earthquake, magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck some 15 miles (25 km) southwest of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010. Haiti's government estimated that more than 300,000 were killed, but other estimates were considerably smaller. Hundreds of thousands of survivors were displaced.

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He has become the first president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression to depart office with fewer jobs in the country than when he entered.

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The following poems about technology, invention, and information are appropriate for young people.
more poems for kids
" Ode to an Encyclopedia" by James Arthur
O hefty hardcover on the built-in shelf...

" Poem to Play" by Hannah Brooks-Moti
It continued to haunt, in its electro-stripes and...

" The Truth About the Present" by John Lane
when rivers are intoxicated...

" He Made This Screen" by Marianne Moore
not of silver nor of coral...
more poems about technology

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The following poems about technology, invention, and information are appropriate for young people. more poems for kids " Ode to an Encyclopedia" by James Arthur O hefty hardcover on the built-in shelf... " Poem to Play" by Hannah Brooks-Moti It continued to haunt, in its electro-stripes and...

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The old adage "write what you know" applies to music, too - and a lot of the time, that means including references to an era's current technology in pop songs. Hey, it makes sense - most of us spend more time messing around with our phones than we do falling in love at first sight, or partying all night, or whatever the hell else most songs are about. But what happens when a song about cutting-edge technology turns into a song about outdated technology?

Pop music history, of course, has always been speckled with references to communication techniques and technology that has gone on to become obsolete; for reference, please consult "Western Union" by the Five Americans, a hit 1967 about being dumped via telegram (which nowadays sounds as old-fashioned as being dumped via scrimshaw). But over the past few decades, as technology has progressed at a blindingly fast rate, songs about technology have a shorter and shorter shelf life. What makes you sound like a hip, youthful insider today makes you sound like a weird, out-of-touch old fogey the next - especially if you stayed fixated on pagers for, like, a really long time.

So bust out your Tamagotchi, steal your mom's PalmPilot, and join us for a trip through the lyrics of 11 pop songs about technology that basically no longer exists. Note: I didn't miss "Payphone" by Maroon 5; it doesn't count because he's purposely invoking outdated technology for nostalgic purposes. God, give me a little credit.

9. Saves The Day, "Third Engine"

Outdated Technology Referenced: Landlines

Listening to this song's anguished lyrics about being stuck on a train with no way to call someone, you have to wonder: if smartphones had existed in the '90s, would anyone ever have gotten lonely enough to invent emo?

8. Rage Against The Machine, "Freedom"

Outdated Technology Referenced: Floppy disks

Rage Against the Machine's well-intentioned-college-freshman politics aren't the only thing about them that feels dated. This 1991 song's reference to the computing technology of the day ("All live, never on a floppy disk") makes it something of a head scratcher now, in an era where many people have never had to use a floppy disk, let alone had to get their political information from guys who climbed the rigging at the VMAs.

7. C-Side, "MySpace Freak"

Outdated Technology Referenced: MySpace

Rap trio C-Side had a few almost-huge hits between 2007 and 2009 - and all of them had something to do with the moment's youth trends (texting, cell phone videos, being a freak). But the social network was a particular inspiration for the group - in addition to the self-explanatory 2007 "MySpace Freak," the group's infinitely more PG-rated 2008 song " Boyfriend/Girlfriend" equated being put at the top of someone's MySpace Top 8 as the ultimate in romantic gestures. Which I guess it kind of was?

6. Muse, "Instant Messenger"

Outdated Technology Referenced: AOL Instant Messenger

Ha ha, you totally thought Muse were too cool to write a song about having an AIM-based crush, right? Me, too. So we both learned something today!

This early track by the British mope-rockers was recorded in 1999, way before they would become famous for writing dour songs that had nothing to do with the cost of per-byte Internet access. But the song's fake Radiohead wailing is actually surprisingly catchy - even though the lyrics are probably about some girl singer Matthew Bellamy met in a Radiohead chat room.

5. Brand New, "Mixtape"

Outdated Technology Referenced: Mixtapes

Back in the day, mixtapes were such a standard part of life, you could incorporate them into a pretty elaborate metaphor which you then used to rag on a fellow emo band (as is done in this song), and no one would really question it. I guess today you would probably just subtweet about their haircuts or something and be done with it.

4. Trey Songz, "LOL :)"

Outdated Technology Referenced: Blackberries; UStream

[We hope] the only Billboard Hot 100 song to ever have an emoticon in the title, this 2009 hit's wide-eyed, blow-by-blow description of both sexting and using social media ("Shawty sent a Twit pic saying come and get this/ LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face/ Go to my page and follow," "Babygirl sent a picture to my Blackberry") instantly made both sexting and using social media seem really, really uncool.

3. Missy Elliott, "Work It"

Outdated Technology Referenced: Radio request lines

Hey, remember back when the only way you could listen to music was to play one of the 25 CDs you already owned, or call in a request to the one radio station in your town, which seemed to only ever play "Rollin'" by Limp Bizkit? I take back everything nostalgic I ever said. The past was horrible and I am glad that it is dead!

2. Common featuring Canibus, "Making A Name For Ourselves"

Outdated Technology Referenced: CD-ROMs

If you are too young to remember CD-ROMs, please note that we used them to learn facts and play Myst, not to go on the internet, no matter what Canibus says in this song ("put this in your CD-Rom/www dot cannibus dot com").

1. Destiny's Child, "Bugaboo"

Outdated Technology Referenced: Pagers; landlines; AOL; MCI phone poles; leaving voicemails

Was this 1999 song - which featured the impossibly timely hook "You make me wanna throw my pager out the window/tell MCI to cut the phone polls" - created to document the first heady moments of our "constant contact" culture, a brave new world where you could annoy the hell out of someone without even being anywhere near them? Or was it written by someone who thought that pagers would remain popular long after the earth was swallowed by the sun? If you see Beyonce, make sure to ask her for me.

Other outdated technology depicted in the video: every outfit and former Destiny's Child members LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett (sorry, had to).

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The 9 Most Hilariously Outdated Songs About Now-Obsolete Technology, Ranked

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The old adage "write what you know" applies to music, too - and a lot of the time, that means including references to an era's current technology in pop songs. Hey, it makes sense - most of us spend more time messing around with our phones than we...

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If seems a long time ago, that's because it was. The DVD player was the hot new entertainment device, mobile phones were bulky and did little besides place calls, and accessing the internet was a novel (and slow) experience confined to desktop computers. It also was the year CNET began publishing news and reviews .

Technology has changed immensely in . One could argue that it's continued to improve our lives, keeping us more connected to information, entertainment and each other. You also could argue just the opposite, but either way, there are a few gadgets and technologies that have changed our lives and the world forever. Here are 25 influential advancements from the past quarter century.

Apple iPhone

Though it wasn't the first smartphone, Apple really got the ball rolling with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Social media, messaging and the mobile internet wouldn't be nearly as powerful or universal if they hadn't been freed from the shackles of the desktop computer and optimized for the iPhone and its dozens of competitors.

Armed with powerful features and able to run thousands of apps, they squeezed more functionality into one device than we'd ever seen before. The mobile revolution also brought the death of point-and-shoot cameras, dashboard GPS units, camcorders, PDAs and MP3 players. Now we use smartphones to shop, as a flashlight and sometimes even to call people. It's tech's version of the Swiss Army knife.

Now, 13 years after the iPhone's introduction, more than 3.5 billion people around the world use a smartphone, nearly half the Earth's population. You may even be using one to read this article.

Wi-Fi

The smartphone and the internet we use today wouldn't have been possible without wireless communication technologies such as Wi-Fi. In 1995 if you wanted to "surf" the internet at home, you had to chain yourself to a network cable like it was an extension cord. In 1997, Wi-Fi was invented and released for consumer use. With a router and a dongle for our laptop, we could unplug from the network cable and roam the house or office and remain online.

Over the years, Wi-Fi's gotten progressively faster and found its way into computers, mobile devices and even cars. Wi-Fi is so essential to our personal and professional lives today that it's almost unheard of to be in a home or public place that doesn't have it.

Internet of things

Wi-Fi hasn't just allowed us to check email or escape boredom at the in-laws, it also made possible a ton of consumer devices that connect and share information without human interaction, creating a system called the internet of things. The term was coined in 1999, but the idea didn't start to take off with consumers until the past decade.

Today, there are tens of billions of internet-connected devices around the globe that allow us to perform smart home tasks such as turning on our lights, checking who's at our front door and getting an alert when we're out of milk. It also has industrial applications, such as in health care and management of municipal services.

Spending on internet of things technology is expected to hit $248 billion this year, more than twice the amount spent three years ago. In five years, the market is expected to top $1.5 trillion.

Voice assistants

For many consumers, the heart of the smart home is a voice assistant such as Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant and Apple's Siri. In addition to being a prerequisite for controlling devices in your home, their connected speakers will tell you the weather, read you the news and play music from various streaming services, among thousands of other "skills."

There were more than 3.25 billion voice assistant devices in use around the world in 2019, and that number is expected to more than double to 8 billion by 2023. But they also present a privacy headache, since the devices are essentially internet-connected microphones that transmit your conversations to servers at Amazon, Google or Apple. All three companies have admitted to using human contractors to listen to select conversations from the voice assistants in an effort to improve their software's accuracy.

Bluetooth

Another wireless communication technology that has proven indispensable is Bluetooth, a radio link that connects devices over short distances. Introduced to consumers in 1999, Bluetooth was built for connecting a mobile phone to a hands-free headset, allowing you to carry on conversations while keeping your hands available for other uses, such as driving a car.

Bluetooth has since expanded to link devices like earbuds, earphones, portable wireless speakers and hearing aids to audio sources like phones, PCs, stereo receivers and even cars. Fitness trackers use Bluetooth to stream data to mobile phones, and PCs can connect wirelessly to keyboards and mice.

Between 2012 and 2018, the number of Bluetooth-enabled devices in the world nearly tripped to 10 billion. Today, Bluetooth is being employed in the smart home for uses such as unlocking door locks and beaming audio to lightbulbs with built-in speakers.

VPN

The virtual private network, essentially an encrypted tunnel for transferring data on the internet, has proven invaluable for both businesses and individuals. Developed in 1996, the technology initially was used almost exclusively by businesses so their remote employees could securely access the company's intranet .

VPN use has grown in popularity since then, with about a quarter of internet users using a VPN in 2018. Today, other popular uses for VPNs include hiding online activity, bypassing internet censorship in countries without a free internet and avoiding geography-based restrictions on streaming services.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the digital cryptocurrency that racked up headlines with its meteoric rise in value a few years back and then its equally breathtaking decline, and it's another technology made popular by anonymity. It cracked the $1,000 threshold for the first time on Jan. 1, 2017, topped $19,000 in December of that year and then lost about 50 percent of its value during the first part of 2018.

The decentralized currency incorporates technology, currency, math, economics and social dynamics. And it's anonymous; instead of using names, tax IDs or Social Security numbers, bitcoin connects buyers and sellers through encryption keys.

Computers running special software -- the "miners" -- inscribe transactions in a vast digital ledger. These blocks are known, collectively, as the "blockchain." But the computational process of mining for bitcoins can be arduous, with thousands of miners competing simultaneously.

Blockchain

Perhaps bigger than bitcoin is blockchain, the encryption technology behind the cryptocurrency. Because blockchains work as a secure digital ledger, a bumper crop of startups hope to bring it to voting, lotteries, ID cards and identity verification, graphics rendering, welfare payments, job hunting and insurance payments.

It's potentially a very big deal. Analyst firm Gartner estimates that blockchain will provide $176 billion in value to businesses by 2025 and a whopping $3.1 trillion by 2030.

MP3

Entertainment has become a whole lot more portable in the past quarter century, in large part due to the introduction of the MP3 and MP4 compression technologies. Research into high-quality, low-bit-rate coding began in the 1970s. The idea was to compress audio into a digital file with little or no loss of audio quality. The MP3 standard that we know today emerged in the mid-'90s, but the first mobile MP3 player wasn't available to consumers until 1998, when South Korea's , a flash-based player that could hold about 12 songs.

The format's popularity took off in 1999, when 19-year-old student Shawn Fanning created the software behind the pioneering file-sharing service Napster, allowing users to swap MP3 files with each other across the internet for free. That activity famously cut into the profits of the recording industry and artists, which filed lawsuits that eventually toppled Napster, but the format helped give rise to the market for streaming music services like Spotify, Apple Music and many others.

Facial recognition

Facial recognition is a blossoming field of technology that's playing an ever-growing role in our lives. It's a form of biometric authentication that uses the features of your face to verify your identity.

The tech helps us unlock devices and sort photos in digital albums, but surveillance and marketing may end up being its prime uses. Cameras linked to facial recognition databases containing millions of mugshots and driver's license photos are used to identify suspected criminals. They also could be used to recognize your face and make personalized shopping recommendations as you enter a store.

Both activities raise privacy concerns, which range from law enforcement overreach, to systems with hidden racial biases, to hackers gaining access to your secure information. And some systems aren't always very accurate.

Even so, the market isn't showing any signs of stalling. In the US alone, the facial recognition industry is expected to grow from $3.2 billion in 2019 to $7 billion by 2024.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence - simulating human intelligence in machines - used to be confined to science fiction. But in recent decades, it's broken into the real world, becoming one of the most important technologies of our time. In addition to being the brains behind facial recognition, AI is helping to solve critical problems in transportation, retail and health care ( spotting breast cancer missed by human eyes, for example). On the internet, it's used for everything from speech recognition to spam filtering. Warner Bros. even plans to use AI to analyze its potential movies and choose which ones to put into development.

But there's also fear that a dystopian future is looming with the creation of autonomous weapons, including drones, missile defense systems and sentry robots. Industry leaders have called for regulation of the technology to prevent the potential harm from tools like deepfakes, which are video forgeries that make people seem to say or do things they didn't.

Drones

Drones have really taken off in recent years. What started out as a hobbyist gadget has transformed industries, with the unmanned aircraft shooting movie sequences, delivering packages to hard-to-reach places, surveying construction sites and spraying pesticide over crops to protect farms.

Drones now range from noisy quadcopters to payload-carrying mini-planes. On the US-Mexico border, Customs and Border Protection uses $16 million military-style Predator drones that can fly as high as nine miles, equipped with radar strong enough to detect footprints in the sand.

In the not-too-distant future, drones are expected to crowd the skies, acting as personal air taxis and performing lifesaving duties such as delivering medicine, helping with search and rescue, and fighting fires.

DNA testing kits

With a simple swab of your cheek or a sample of your saliva, DNA testing kits have helped deepen our understanding of ancestry, introduced us to living relatives around the world, determined paternity and shed light on a predisposition to specific health issues and diseases.

Over the past few years, the kits have become quite affordable and popular. Law enforcement agencies in particular have grown fond of the kits. Using a technique called genetic genealogy, they've cracked dozens of murder, rape and assault cases , some from decades ago.

Then investigators use traditional genealogical research to identify possible suspects, who are then tested for a DNA match to the crime scene. But the practice relies on investigators having access to a large cache of DNA profiles, and it stirs worries among privacy watchdogs.

Quantum computing

Companies and countries are pouring billions of dollars into quantum computing research and development. They're betting it will pay off by opening up new abilities in chemistry, shipping, materials design, finance, artificial intelligence and more.

The technology is beginning to show some of the promise researchers have hyped for decades. Last year, a Google-designed quantum processor called Sycamore completed a task in 200 seconds that, by Google's estimate, would take 10,000 years on the world's fastest supercomputer.

Honeywell, which once sold massive mainframes, predicts the performance of its quantum computers will grow by a factor of 10 every year for each of the next five years -- meaning they'd be 100,000 times faster in 2025.

Social networking

The online world was a very different place two decades ago. Social networkers of a certain age may remember Friendster, the site that launched in 2002 and allowed people to fill out an online profile and connect with people they knew in real life. But two years later, Mark Zuckerberg changed everything when he launched a social-networking site for college students called Facebook. It opened to the general public in 2006 and quickly left Friendster and MySpace far behind.

Today Facebook helps people connect and stay connected, but its real business is advertising. Last year, it brought in $32 billion in ad revenue. It also helped pave the way for other social networks that help people chat, share photos and find jobs, among other activities. It now has 2.37 billion users - nearly a third of the world's population.

3D printing

3D printing -- the process of synthesizing a three-dimensional object -- is one of those technologies that edges ever closer to mainstream use every year. We've seen the concept play out on TV and in movies for years, and now with home 3D printers it's finally growing beyond a wildly exotic hobby for a small enthusiast audience.

3D printing got an early foothold as a way to design prototypes of just about anything. The technology allows manufacturers to build plastic components that are lighter than metal alternatives and with unusual shapes that can't be made by conventional injection molding methods.

The devices are used to create materials inside football helmets and Adidas running shoes, and Porsche plans to roll out a new 3D printing program that will allow customers to have their cars' seats partially 3D-printed.

Some call 3D printing the fourth industrial revolution. Spending in the field is growing at about 13% annually among large US companies, consulting firm Deloitte estimates, and will likely reach $2 billion in 2020.

Video streaming

Twenty-five years ago, a new media storage format was taking the entertainment world by storm. DVDs had superior picture and sound quality to the VHS tape, and they took up less room on your shelves. Movie rental stores abandoned VHS for DVDs, and online rental services like Netflix popped up, offering the convenience of mailing rented discs directly to you.

Then Netflix introduced its streaming service, allowing people to watch movies and TV shows across the internet. Consumers fell in love with the convenience of on-demand programming and began the phenomenon of "cutting the cord." As more streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and YouTube emerged, consumers started canceling cable and satellite subscriptions and rental services such as Blockbuster went belly up.

By next year, more than one-fifth of US households are expected to have cut the cord on cable and satellite services, according to eMarketer.

Music streaming

Vinyl will always be popular among audiophiles, but streaming is still the future of music listening. Streaming music is cheap or even free (in the case of Pandora and Spotify) and outpaces any physical format when it comes to convenience.

Streaming now represents 85% of all music consumption in the US, a 7.6% increase over 2018, according to BuzzAngle Music. In 2019, on-demand audio stream consumption hit a record 705 billion streams, a 32% increase over the previous year.

In 2019, total music industry revenues rose 13% to $11.1 billion, with streaming accounting for nearly 80% of that total, according to the RIAA. But at the same time, album sales fell 23% in 2019 and song sales dropped 26%. And that's after declines of 18.2% and 28.8%, respectively, the previous year.

Apps

Mobile apps have changed the way we consume media and communicate, from news and streaming services to texting and social media apps. They have also changed the way we go about living our daily lives, helping us find on-demand rides, short- and long-term rentals, and have food delivered to our door, just to name a few of the countless benefits.

There are more than 2 million apps in the Apple App Store, generating about $50 billion in revenue.

Autonomous vehicles

The promise of autonomous vehicles has been touted for more than a decade: Without human drivers, proponents say, cars will be safer and more comfortable, especially on long trips. Technology companies have been working on making them a reality for a long time. The driverless vehicle fleet from Waymo, the autonomous car company owned by Google parent Alphabet, has driven more than 20 million miles on public roads since its founding in 2009.

Fully self-driving cars may not arrive in dealerships for another decade, but we're already benefiting from the technology being developed for autonomous vehicles, including adaptive cruise control, automatic forward-collision braking, automatic parking, autopilot and lane-keep assist.

Retailers fell in love with radio frequency identification tracking some 20 years ago, touting the little chips as a convenient way to control inventory and reduce theft, without people having to make contact with the tagged item. Today, they have a variety of applications, including tracking cars, computer equipment and books. They're implanted into animals to help identify the owners of lost pets, farmers use them to monitor crops and livestock, and they help food companies track the source of packaged goods.

Thanks to growing demand, especially in the medical and health care industries, where the tracking technology is used to monitor patients and label medications, spending in the RFID tag industry is projected to hit $17 billion, more than twice the $8.2 billion spent in 2018.

Virtual reality

Companies large and small have begun using virtual reality, which transports users to a computer-generated world. Once confined to the realm of science-fiction movies like Walt Disney's Tron, virtual reality has grown into a real-world industry worth an estimated $18 billion.

While the video game industry was expected to get an economic boost from virtual reality, the broader tech industry sees other applications for the nascent technology, including education, , architecture and .

Videoconferencing

As the coronavirus pandemic has changed the world we live in, forcing us to avoid contact with others and shelter in place, videoconferencing has exploded in popularity. A few months ago, this technology wouldn't have made our list, but now it's proving indispensable. Video telephony has been around in some form since the 1970s, but it wasn't until the web debuted that the technology took off.

Along with webcams, free internet services such as Skype and iChat popularized the tech in the 2000s, taking videoconferencing to all corners of the internet. The corporate world embraced the tool as a way to cut down on employee travel for meetings and as a marketing tool.

As companies and schools implemented policies on work and study from home, video chatting and conferencing apps grew in popularity as a way to get work done and communicate with friends and family, especially among people who had never used the tech before.

E-cigarettes

Battery-operated e-cigarettes hit the US market about a decade ago, touted as a safer alternative to traditional tobacco cigarettes. However, they didn't really gain traction until 2015, when Juul Labs debuted its discreet USB-size vaporizer and quickly became the industry leader.

In 2019, an increasing number of people who vape were winding up in hospital with symptoms that include coughing, shortness of breath and other health problems after vaping -- and at least 54 people have died.

Juul is accused in a lawsuit of illegally targeting young people online in advertising campaigns. Vaping companies have been sued on similar grounds in other courts. San Francisco banned the sale of e-cigarettes in June.

Ransomware

The first ransomware attack can be traced to the late 1980s, but the malware has grown in prominence as one of the greatest cybersecurity threats since 2005. Ransomware locks down a victim's computer system until a ransom, usually in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, is paid. Hackers often threaten to erase data. It spreads like other malware does, through email attachments or unsecured links.

Ransomware attacks skyrocketed in 2019, hitting nearly 1,000 government agencies, educational establishments and health care providers in the US, at an estimated cost of $7.5 billion.

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25 technologies that have changed the world

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For better or worse, these techs and gadgets changed our lives in the past quarter century.

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The early 2000s were not a good time for technology. After entering the new millennium amid the impotent panic of the Y2K bug, it wasn't long before the Dotcom Bubble was bursting all the hopes of a new internet-based era.

Fortunately the recovery was swift and within a few years brand new technologies were emerging that would transform culture, politics and the economy.

They have brought with them new ways of connecting, consuming and getting around, while also raising fresh Doomsday concerns. As we enter a new decade of the 21st Century, we've rounded up the best and worst of the technologies that have taken us here, while offering some clue of where we might be going.

There was nothing much really new about the iPhone: there had been phones before, there had been computers before, there had been phones combined into computers before. There was also a lot that wasn't good about it: it was slow, its internet connection barely functioned, and it would be two years before it could even take a video.

But as the foremost smartphone it heralded a revolution in the way people communicate, listen, watch and create. There has been no aspect of life that hasn't been changed by the technologies bundled up in the iPhone - an ever-present and always-on internet connection, a camera that never leaves your side, a computer with mighty processing power that can be plucked out of your pocket.

The 2000s have, so far, been the era of mobile computers and social networking changing the shape of our cultural, political and social climate. All of those huge changes, for better or worse, are bound up in that tiny phone. AG

Though few people noticed, online social networks actually began at the end of the last century. The first was Six Degrees in 1997, which was named after the theory that everyone on the planet is separated by only six other people. It included features that became popular with subsequent iterations of the form, including profiles and friend lists, but it never really took off.

It wasn't until Friend's Reunited and MySpace in the early 2000s that social networks achieved mainstream success, though even these seem insignificant when compared to Facebook.

Not only did Mark Zuckerberg's creation muscle its way to a monopoly in terms of social networks, it also swallowed up any nascent competitors in a space that came to be known as social media. First there was Instagram in 2012, for a modest $1 billion, and then came WhatsApp in 2014 for $19bn.

Between all of its apps, Facebook now reaches more than 2 billion people every day. It has come to define the way we communicate and heralded a new era of hyper-connectedness, while also profoundly shaping the internet as we know it. In doing so, Facebook has not only consigned the site Six Degrees to the history books, it has also re-written the theory itself - cutting it down to just three-and-a-half degrees of separation. AC

At the start of this century, the complete reinvention of the entire economic system wasn't something many people were talking about. But then the 2007-08 financial crisis happened. As mortgages defaulted, companies collapsed, and governments bailed out the banks to the tune of trillions of dollars, people began to wonder if there might be a better way.

One person - or group - believed they had the answer. Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity may still be a mystery, but their creation of a new "electronic cash system" called bitcoin in 2009 could have implications far beyond just currency. The underlying blockchain technology - an immutable and unhackable online ledger - could potentially transform everything from healthcare to real estate.

Bitcoin is yet to take off as a mainstream form of payment or transform the global economy like it might have promised, but we are barely a decade into the great cryptocurrency experiment. It has inspired thousands of imitators, including those currently being developed by Facebook and China, and it may be another 10 years before its true potential is finally realised. AC

"Alright, so here we are, in front of the, er, elephants. And the cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks. And that's cool."

It may have been an inauspicious start, but these words would go on to fundamentally transform the way people consume media in the 21st century. It was 23 April, 2005, and Jawed Karim had just uploaded the first ever video to YouTube - a video-sharing website he had helped create.

Just over a year later, Google bought the site for $1.65 billion and the fortunes of Karim, his co-founders, and countless future content creators were changed forever.

There are now hundreds of hours of video published to YouTube every minute - and it all started with that 18-second clip at the zoo. AC

Arthur C Clarke famously quipped that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". But there is surely nothing more like magic - and no magic more powerful - than the fact that the 21st century has brought the ability to instantly connect to information and people at the other side of the world.

First, at the beginning of the century, came 3G, and then 10 years or so later came 4G. Every decade of this century has been marked by new advances in the speed and reliability of mobile data connections.

And those mobile data connections have helped re-write the world that relies on them. Just about every other major breakthrough in technology that came through the 2000s - social media, instant photo sharing, citizen journalism and everything else - relied on having data connections everywhere.

5G - which has ostensibly already rolled out, but is yet to make its full impact - is likely to be similarly transformative through the decade to come, if its evangelists are to be believed.

Debates have raged about whether this constant connectivity - and the distractions and dangers it has brought - has really driven us apart. But that too is surely testament to its power. AG

Many of technology's biggest developments in the 2000s haven't really been about technology at all: piracy and then streaming changed how we make and consume culture entirely, social media has turned politics on his head. Nowhere is that more clear than in the gig economy and the apps and websites like Uber, Deliveroo and Airbnb that power it, which claim to be tech businesses but are really new ways of buying and selling labour.

The real revolution of the gig economy was not the technology that powers these apps: there is little difference between calling for a cab and summoning an Uber, really. Nor was it what the companies like to suggest, that they have opened up a new and inspiring way of working that allows anyone to clock on whenever they log on.

Instead, it was the beginning of a process of changing the way that people work and relate to those who fulfil services for them. It is likely that we have not seen the end of the kinds of profound changes that these companies have made to working conditions - or the ways that those workers have fought back. AG

Virtual reality has been the future before: ever since the first stereoscopes, people have been excited about the possibility of disappearing into other worlds that appear before their eyes. But it has never quite arrived.

But in the more recent years of the 2000s it started to look a bit more meaningful. Virtual reality headsets have been pushed out by many of the world's biggest companies, and consumer computers are finally powerful enough to generate believable worlds that people are happy to spend their time in.

In recent years, much of the focus has turned to augmented reality rather than virtual reality. That technology allows information to be overlaid on top of the real world, rather than putting people into an entirely virtual world. If it comes off - if it is not confined to failed experiments like Google Glass - then it could change the way we interact with the world, potentially giving us information all of the time and could even do away with things like smartphones as our primary way of connecting with technology. AG

Quantum computing has not really happened yet. A few months ago, researchers announced that they had achieved "quantum supremacy" by doing an operation that would not be possible on a traditional computer - but it was a largely useless, very specific, operation, which didn't really change anything in itself.

Already, however, the promise - and the threat - of quantum computing is changing the world. It looks set to upend all of our assumptions about computers, allowing them to be unimaginably fast and do work never thought possible. It could unlock new kinds of health research and scientific understanding; it could also literally unlock encryption, which currently relies on impossible calculations that could quickly become very possible with quantum computers.

It isn't clear when it will arrive, of course; like other potentially revolutionary technologies, it could take a very long time or never arrive at all. But it is sitting there in the future, ready to turn everything on its head - and, as researchers rush to understand it, it is already changing the world. AG

No vision of the future would be complete without the ability to speak to and control your home. And now it seems like we are finally living in it.

Through the 2000s, just about everything came to be hooked up to the internet: you could buy smart kettles, internet-enabled doorbells, and a video camera for every room in your house. And to control them came microphones and speakers that you put in your house and could talk to.

But as the smart home and the voice assistants that power it have soared in popularity, they have been beset by concerns, too. Is giving over control of your home to internet-enabled devices safe, when those devices can break down or be seized by hackers? Should we be allowing internet giants like Amazon and Google to put microphones in our home? As we enter the new decade, it looks like our homes are set to be defined not by the capabilities the technology in our homes give us - but who we want to have power over them. AG

Before there was Spotify, there was Napster, and before people were watching movies on Netflix, they were downloading them through PirateBay. Piracy has been one step ahead of legal ways to consume media but in doing so it has led the way for new platforms that now dominate our online lives.

Streaming has not only changed the way we listen to music and watch films, it has also given rise to new ways to create content. Live streaming video games on Twitch is one of the fastest growing mediums, while live video broadcasts through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube give people instant access to everything from street protests to rocket launches.

But as online streaming grows, so does piracy. The ' world's biggest online piracy operation' is currently underway in Saudi Arabia, while PirateBay has just launched a streaming platform that offers more content than Amazon Prime, Netflix and Disney+ combined. AC

It is almost unbelievable to think that playing games against friends once meant crowding around a console in a bedroom. Now, games that even offer the ability to do so are few and far between - and those that are not always connected to the internet and putting you up against strangers are very unusual indeed.

The internet has changed games in other ways, too. One of the most popular forms of entertainment in the world is now live streaming, where people watch other people play games.

Developers can also give people continual updates and extra content through downloadable content, and ask players to repeatedly pay for upgrades through microtransactions. Those changes have made a game not a stable, definitive thing, but a world that is continually developing (and generating more money). AG

Space is hard, famously; more importantly, it is very expensive. Reusable, commercially made rockets could change both.

Over the 2000s, responsibility for much of the technology used to get astronauts into space was handed more and more to private companies such as SpaceX. In order to keep costs down - and their profits up - those companies are working towards making rockets that can be re-used, just like planes, shuttling people up into the sky before dropping back down for the next mission.

SpaceX in particular has made huge strides in this respect, fulfilling a spectacular mission to have its rockets land back down on a barge floating in the sea. But the breakthroughs have not been without their problems. The involvement of commercial companies has come with its critics, who argue that it could compromise safety and make private companies yet more powerful. AG

It took nearly 50 years for the automobile to dislodge the horse and cart as the main form of transport, but the next great transition in road transport may be just years away thanks to the advent of two new vehicular revolutions in the early 21st century: electric-powered cars and self-driving technology.

Electric cars are already quicker, safer, and more interesting to look at than traditional gas guzzlers, but they still can't compete in one key area: charge time. Recent battery breakthroughs mean this could soon change, with engineers figuring out a way to recharge an electric car in just 10 minutes - at least in the lab.

Advancements in self-driving cars have been even more drastic. Pioneered by the likes of Tesla's Autopilot mode, drivers are now able to travel from one place to another almost autonomously. Major automakers like Volvo have even started producing concept vehicles that don't even include a steering wheel in their design.

Such progress makes it inevitable that at some point in the not-so-distant future, self-driving electric cars will simply be called cars. AC

2045. This is the year that renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts the technological singularity will take place - the moment when computers surpass human intelligence and continue to improve at an uncontrollable rate, signalling the end of the human era. "The pace of change will be so astonishingly quick that we won't be able to keep up," Kurzweil warned in his seminal book on artificial intelligence in 2005, The Singularity is Near, which brought the technology from the realm of science fiction fears, to real-world ramifications.

Kurzweil has since taken up a position at Google, the company some leading AI experts believe is winning the race to create human-level artificial intelligence. One of the reasons for this is the technology giant's acquisition of DeepMind in 2014 - arguably the world's leading AI company. With the vast resources of Google at its disposal, DeepMind has since surpassed key milestones leading towards the singularity, such as beating human champions at the vastly complex board game Go.

It is too early to judge the accuracy of Kursweil's prediction (of his 147 predictions since the 1990s, he claims an 86 per cent accuracy rate), though the advances made over the last two decades mean his concerns may soon no longer be simply hypothesis. He is now joined by some of this century's brightest minds in warning of the existential threat that AI continues to pose to humanity. AC

Amazon has been referred to as the everything store. And it's now the everywhere store: not only the internet's central marketplace, and a disruptive force that has changed what people expect from internet shopping, it is now also the underpinnings of the internet itself.

The way Amazon has changed shopping is profoundly important, of course. By offering the ability to buy just about anything you want online and have it arrive quickly, it precipitated a revolution both in online shopping and on the high street.

Because the online shop is only the most obvious part of Amazon. It's internet infrastructure underpins much of the web; Alexa is the leading light of the smart home and voice assistant revolution; it owns real shops including Whole Foods; its decisions over things like locations and taxes are like government policy only bigger. Over the 2000s, Amazon came to own much of the internet, and technology's future will decide what it does with it. AG

Before this century began, making long distance phone calls was a costly and frustrating endeavour. Voice delays were an accepted part of calling between different time zones and conversations between participants had to be significantly adapted in order to not interrupt or talk over each other.

All of this changed when Skype appeared in 2003. The internet had already brought the possibility of cheap international calls, but Skype's technology brought high-quality calls that were completely free.

Its growth was astonishing. It took just 10 years to reach 300 million connected users - a feat that took the mobile phone 25 years, and the traditional telephone 104 years. It has also reached that rarefied tech territory shared by the likes of Google and Xerox, whereby its name has outgrown it and is now a commonly recognised verb.

Skype inspired important imitators like Apple's FaceTime and WhatsApp's video call function, all of which have continued to make the world smaller with a combined user base of billions. AC

One of the early promises of the internet was to provide the world with free and easily accessible information. With the possible exception of Google, nothing has fulfilled this quite like Wikipedia.

Founded by Jimmy Wales in 2003, Wikipedia was not the first online encyclopedia. It was not even the first online encyclopedia created by Wales. Three years earlier, he had helped found the peer-reviewed encyclopedia Nupedia, which was free to use but had strict controls on who could post.

Wikipedia opened this up by adopting the concept of wiki - a collaborative form of website whereby users work together to create it. By allowing anyone with an internet connection to contribute content and make edits, Wikipedia was able to grow at a rate that would have previously been inconceivable. Nupedia's laborious seven-step approval process had seen just 21 articles published in its first year. In Wikipedia's first year, more than 18,000 had been published.

The English-language version alone of the ever-evolving information resource now has more than 5 million articles - and all of it completely free and easily accessible. AC

In the year 2000, the world was introduced to Asimo: a humanoid robot created by Honda that astounded onlookers by descending some stairs to enter a conference. It was to be the first in an impressive line of increasingly evolved bi-pedal robots that are now capable of tricks most humans can't even do - from performing backflips, to visiting space.

After decades of nebulous developments into robotics in the 20th century, real-world uses are finally being found in everything from recycling, to caring for the elderly. A mesh of other new technologies, like virtual reality and 5G, mean it is now possible to remotely control robots in real time - though it may take another few years for the implications of such technologies to be fully realised.

When they are realised, the advances made in the early 21st century could pave the way for robots exploring the outer reaches of space on behalf of humanity. AC

In hindsight, George Orwell's prophetic warning in 1984 that 'Big Brother is Watching You' seems relatively naive. Sure, there are CCTV cameras on nearly every street corner of the UK, but technology's invasiveness is far more pervasive. We now invite listening devices into our pockets and cameras into our homes, all in the hope that our lives will be slightly more convenient and occasionally less lonely.

In 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg declared that the age of privacy is over. He said in an interview that privacy was no longer a "social norm", and the billions of people signing up to his social network seemed to attest to this. But subsequent data scandals with Facebook and the rise of advanced facial recognition software has seen a recent push back against the steady erosion of privacy.

Just as technology has heralded a new era of surveillance, it has also enabled new forms of privacy, like virtual private networks (VPNs) and encryption software. These will be among the weapons in the fight to prevent an Orwellian dystopia from being realised. AC

Perhaps the most underrated technological development of the 2000s is that the idea of getting lost has been made obsolete. Services like Google and Apple's maps made every part of the world viewable and navigable from above. Others like Waze and Citymapper introduced rich data that make journeys faster and smarter.

With the development of those apps, getting around has changed fundamentally. They have come alongside other changes like the availability of small vehicles such as scooters that are distributed around towns, and the promise of smart and self-driving cars. We possess a wealth of information on where we are and where we are going that previous generations could never have imagined, and it is being used in ways that will rewrite both real and virtual landscapes.

Location data is some of the most valuable on offer to technology firms, and companies like Google and Facebook have faced questions about what they gather on users and why. But it is so useful precisely because it is so personal; it offers great value to us, too. AG

[This article was originally published in December 2019]

Related: To find the best iPhone offers around, try our comparison page on the best iPhone deals.

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20 technologies that defined the first 20 years of the 21st Century

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The early 2000s were not a good time for technology. After entering the new millennium amid the impotent panic of the Y2K bug, it wasn't long before the Dotcom Bubble was bursting all the hopes of a new internet-based era.

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From the year after PW 's 125th anniversary issue, 1998-the year when the first handheld e-readers came out, the first library lending of e-books was launched, and e-books first got ISBNs-to today's robust global e-book ecosystem and the innovations that keep pushing it in new directions, e-books have always been part of the conversation, good or bad.

The hype dates back much further than that.

A Very Old New Idea

The first published concept of an e-reader is generally credited to the writer Bob Brown, who in 1930 put out a manifesto advocating for the development of "readies" (reed-ees) to compete with movies, which had not long before launched "talkies." He wanted "a simple reading machine which I can carry or move around, attach to any old electric light plug and read hundred-thousand-word novels in 10 minutes if I want to, and I want to."

The first actual electronic books are generally credited to Michael S. Hart, a student at the University of Illinois who had access to a mainframe computer and Arpanet, the precursor to the internet. He started by creating digital text of the Declaration of Independence and publishing it on the network in 1971, which launched a robust e-book publishing venture called Project Gutenberg. There were actual e-books (not just that first pamphlet) produced for pleasure reading and distributed online for free 50 years ago. Project Gutenberg, a volunteer-driven project, is still going strong today, currently boasting over 60,000 books, mostly those whose U.S. copyright has expired.

I'm old enough to remember that first e-book. But many reading this article may at least remember when e-books began to flourish in the CD-ROM era. You may not remember DynaText, created in 1990 for delivering really big e-books, like technical manuals for aircraft on CD-ROM. But I hope some of you remember Voyager, which launched Expanded Books in 1991. (A shout-out to one of its founders, Bob Stein, who is still expanding our vision of publishing to this day.) I would argue that Expanded Books, and several of its underlying technologies, really raised the bar-and raised expectations-for what e-books could be, including video, audio, and interactivity. Real books, on steroids. The future had arrived.

The First Generation of E-books

The 1990s saw a proliferation of e-books and e-book developments. Bibliobytes, a website for distributing free and for-sale e-books over the internet, was founded in 1993. (What, you thought Jeff Bezos invented that? Amazon was founded in 1994, to sell print books.) HTML, the markup language of the web-and of almost all e-books, unless you consider PDFs e-books-became a standard in 1995. Project Gutenberg published its 1,000th e-book in 1996. E-Ink, the display technology used to this day in e-readers like the Nook, Kobo, and Kindle, was invented in 1996 and commercialized in 1997, just as PW was about to celebrate its 125th anniversary. The e-book era was off and running.

When people think of e-books, they don't just think of the digital content. They also think of the device on which they read it. The first handheld e-readers, NuvoMedia's Rocket eBook and the SoftBook reader, came out in 1998, and others, like Mobipocket and the Sony Reader, soon followed. NetLibrary, one of the leading early distributors of e-books to both the academic and general public markets (and which, significantly, enabled e-books to be lent by libraries), was also founded in 1998. E-books got ISBNs in 1998. And Google was founded in 1998. Lots was happening when PW hit 125!

But Houston, we had a problem. Each of those e-readers used its own proprietary markup system. Publishers that wanted to distribute their e-books widely had to make a different version of the e-book for each e-reader-different electronic files, each coded in a different way. This was unsustainable.

Dismantling the Tower of Babel

The Open eBook Forum, a group composed of volunteer technologists, many employed by the e-reader companies or the service providers that created the e-book files, was formed to develop an open standard format that all e-books could use. The result, known as OEB and formally named the Open Ebook Publication Structure, was published as OEBPS 1.0 in 1999.

One of the great virtues of OEB was that it was a standard built on standards: XML markup for the content, based on the HTML vocabulary and rendered by CSS, with Dublin Core metadata, packaged in a .zip container. For those unfamiliar with these acronyms, they are fundamental technologies, all open standards, very widely understood and used, all still dominant today. OEB was designed to be the opposite of a proprietary format-one format, free and open, that everyone could use.

Did that suddenly put those proprietary e-reader companies out of business? Not at all. They could convert OEB to their own proprietary formats rather than force publishers to do that, or data conversion firms could do the job. It mostly worked. There was, predictably, a transitional phase for the industry to retool and retrain. Along the way, OEB evolved as real-world experience prompted improvements. The Open eBook Forum became the IDPF, the International Digital Publishing Forum, in 2004. Finally, in 2007, what was then OPS (Open Publication Structure) 2.0 was released-and renamed EPUB.

Another notable event in 2007: Amazon launched the Kindle. Which didn't use EPUB.

The Kindle was based on a proprietary format: Mobipocket, which Amazon had acquired rather than reinventing e-reader software. For many years, as the other e-readers evolved to support EPUB (or went out of business), publishers still had to provide two different formats for their e-books: the Kindle format for Amazon and EPUB for everybody else. It wasn't the Tower of Babel anymore, but it was a pain in the neck. (Today, Amazon wants publishers to provide EPUB 3, which it converts to what is really a constellation of Kindle formats for its various devices.) EPUB is now maintained by the W3C, the Worldwide Web Consortium, which maintains the web standards on which EPUB is still based, like XML, HTML, and CSS. The IDPF became a part of the W3C in 2017.

To pick up on that blithe "or went out of business" comment: the e-book ecosystem changed from a group of small e-reader companies like Mobi, Rocket eBook, and SoftBook, and an e-reader from a big company, the Sony Reader, to today's ecosystem dominated by big players, some of which sell devices, some of which provide e-reader software, and some of which do both.

Amazon is far and away the biggest; its various models of Kindle are very popular, and Kindle software enables Amazon's e-books to be read on phones, laptops, and tablets as well. Apple iBooks and Google Play Books are both big players, each selling millions of e-books (but not selling devices). Kobo, having originated in Canada's big Indigo bookstore chain, is also a big player, especially internationally; it is now owned by Rakuten, the Japanese publishing giant. Barnes & Noble's NOOK is also popular, with a suite of devices and, unsurprisingly, a big selection of books.

There are a great many other e-reader systems and software in the world today; those I mentioned are just the most prominent. For example, OverDrive's two e-readers are very widely used in public and school libraries, and SimplyE, a free, open source e-reader app developed by the New York Public Library, is also notable. Adobe Digital Editions software was once dominant, but has faded.

Why Can't I Share My EPUB and Read It on All My Devices?

Despite the diversity mentioned above, this is no longer the Tower of Babel. Today most publishers are able to create one EPUB and distribute it to all of those retailers and aggregators. And with the prominent exception of Amazon, the actual e-book files that the players mentioned above actually deliver to end users are mostly EPUB files. Why can't they be opened everywhere?

This is where I have to use the acronym never to be spoken: DRM, which stands for digital rights management. I work with lots of technologists. In that world, DRM is anathema. The technology world, and certain sectors of publishing (more on this below), are undergoing a major transition to openness. This is a Very Good Thing. In that world, DRM is viewed as access prevention software, which is precisely what it is.

But commercial publishers depend on DRM to protect their intellectual property. One of the virtues of digital publications is the ease with which they can be duplicated and distributed. While commercial publishers have embraced the digital world, that aspect of it can be seriously threatening: piracy is a real problem. They can't sell a single book to a single person without the assurance that the digital file won't get duplicated and shared in an ever-expanding flood of duplicates that undermines the sale of that book. (The reality is that DRM is often cracked; but the problem of piracy would be far worse without it.)

Most people mistakenly assume that commercial publishers are the ones who apply DRM to their books. Actually, no. The EPUBs that they send to all the players discussed above are DRM-free. That's because each of those players needs their own DRM. They're the ones that actually sell the books; they need to make sure the books can only be opened within their own walled gardens, their collection of e-readers, apps, and software-and further, to control that the e-books can only be opened, with minor exceptions, by the purchaser.

So what we have now is an e-book ecosystem that is almost entirely built on free, open standards, often with open source software, that is intricately interconnected, but with toll gates. Those toll gates are essential to the retail book supply chain: they enable everybody in that supply chain-from the retailers who actually sell the books, to the distributors and aggregators, the publishers, and the authors-to get paid.

But this is not true of all books. Because scholarly and scientific publishing has made such a significant commitment to open access in the past few years, new payment methods are evolving. These are largely in place for journals, particularly scientific journals: the cost of publication of an article is covered up-front by what are called APCs, article processing charges, paid by the authors, typically from the funds supporting their research. Books have proven much more complicated. Humanities authors don't get funding like scientists do; they can take years to produce a single book; and the cost of publishing a book is many times that of publishing a journal article.

Today, in both scientific and humanities scholarship, funding models for books are evolving. A variety of complex contractual arrangements have been developed between large publishers and large library systems that bundle the costs of subscriptions and the costs of publication in order to make all the books (and journals) open access. University presses and other smaller scholarly publishers are developing innovative "subscribe to open" systems that enable books to be published open access when enough libraries commit to contributing to the publication costs of a book. What had been an unfulfilled expectation-e-books should be easy to share-is becoming an underappreciated success in the eyes of the general public (but very much appreciated by scientists and scholars).

The Other Kind of Access: Accessibility

Providing access to books for people who have physical or cognitive disabilities that prevent them from reading print effectively, known as the print disabled, has been a longstanding, and long-neglected, problem in publishing. Decades ago, providing that access was extremely labor-intensive. Books were narrated and recorded (this was before audiobooks became common) or rekeyed as Braille, or OCR'd, proofread, and encoded in special tagging systems that made them usable with assistive technology, like screen readers. None of the solutions was ideal; all were expensive; and especially in education, students often couldn't obtain proper course materials until the semester was well underway.

The advent of digital publishing was a huge step forward. Now, digital files could be obtained to eliminate the need to re-keyboard and re-proofread books, and those files could be encoded in the special coding systems for assistive technology. But hardly any books were originally published in those accessible forms; publishers were even reluctant to provide the digital files to services that could make them accessible, for fear of piracy. To be used by assistive technology, they couldn't have DRM. And even when publishers did provide the files, a lot of remediation still needed to be done, because they almost always lacked essential aspects like image descriptions and proper navigation and coding. That still entailed a lot of work, a lot of cost, and a lot of delay.

What I think is one of the most important underappreciated successes of e-books is that EPUB is now designed to be properly accessible in the first place: books can be "born accessible." They don't require special coding, they just need to use the standard EPUB specifications correctly. So if they have been tagged properly with HTML; if they have proper navigation, like a linked table of contents, and clear reading order; if they have proper metadata; and, if there are images, they have image descriptions-they are accessible out of the gate. The same EPUB everybody can buy can be accessible for print-disabled users. At the same time and the same cost.

This is happening today. Especially in higher education, and to a lesser extent in scholarly and trade publishing as well, many publishers have made the commitment to make their EPUBs accessible, and many of the prepress and data conversion vendors who produce most of those EPUB files have learned how to make them accessible in the first place. (The exceptions are what are called "fixed-layout" e-books: many cookbooks and children's books, comics, manga, and graphic novels. We have not yet solved the problem of making those accessible, but there is ongoing work in the task forces and working groups in the W3C to get this done.)

For most trade books and academic books, I would count this as a realized expectation: that e-books should be accessible. It is still underappreciated, and it's far from universal, but the fact that standard EPUBs can be fully accessible is a huge success.

What About All Those Cool Things Expanded Books Did?

As e-books became mainstream-today, virtually all trade and scholarly books are published as EPUBs in addition to print (another underappreciated success)-the original expectation that they would replace print, because they would provide so much better functionality, gradually faded. Despite all those books being available as e-books, e-books have plateaued in the past few years at about 20%-25% of sales. And even as audiobooks have recently surged, almost no trade e-books have video, audio, or interactive features, despite the EPUB spec enabling those features-they're still "just normal books." Talk about an unfulfilled expectation!

This should not be a surprise. The traditional print book is a wonderful format for a typical novel or nonfiction trade book, as well as for most scholarly monographs. E-books are a welcome complement-I'm far from alone in buying, for travel, an e-book for my Kindle of a book I'm reading in print at home-but most commentators, including me (and I serve as the W3C Global Publishing Evangelist!), don't expect them ever to replace print.

The underappreciated success of this vision for e-books is being realized outside of trade, primarily in higher education, and in training and some scholarship as well. Most of the leading higher education publishers are moving away from print in favor of online platforms that in fact do provide the sophisticated media and interactive features that most e-books lack. Many of those publishers have built those platforms on an EPUB foundation and still call the books e-books. And there are online scholarly e-book platforms that provide these features to enable researchers to convey their research in dynamic ways impossible in print.

The Good Work Continues

It's a common mistake to assume that new developments displace what came before. What we have now is a much richer, more complex publishing ecosystem than when PW turned 125, thanks to e-books. Will we still have print when PW is 175? Of course. What you may be surprised to hear me say is that I think we will still have EPUBs that are very much the same as today's EPUB 3. There are now many millions of EPUB 3s in the world, and virtually all e-reading systems and software are built for EPUB 3. When the IDPF, in one of its last acts, published EPUB 3.1, it was not backwards compatible with EPUB 3.0. Big mistake: it was virtually ignored by the industry. That was corrected after the IDPF became a part of the W3C. Today's EPUB 3.2 is backwards compatible with EPUB 3.0-and it's getting very broad acceptance. It does what most people need it to do-including being able to be accessible for the print disabled.

Does that mean the W3C just shuts down work on it? Not at all. There is in fact a new, improved version, EPUB 3.3, in the late stages of development. But the charter for the EPUB 3 Working Group was very strict on an important principle: EPUB 3.3 has to be backwards compatible with EPUB 3.2, the current version. It works; don't break it.

At the same time, lots of work is being done both to further improve EPUB and potentially to move beyond it with alternative, not replacement, specifications. Making fixed layout EPUBs accessible is one example of an improvement underway. As for moving beyond EPUB without displacing it, the W3C developed an updated spec for a publication manifest, using different, and more modern, coding than the one in EPUB; the new audiobooks standard is the first profile of that manifest. It is hoped-and I expect-that it will soon be used to address both the needs of "visual narratives" (e.g., comics, manga, graphic novels), and, separately, to standardize the pathbreaking work being done in those higher education platforms I mentioned that offer browser-based content, media, and interactivity.

Our e-book publishing ecosystem just keeps getting better.

Bill Kasdorf is principal of Kasdorf & Associates, founding partner of Publishing Technology Partners, W3C Global Publishing Evangelist, and a columnist for Publishers Weekly.

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The story of the e-book is one of unfulfilled expectations and underappreciated successes, writes 'PW' columnist Bill Kasdorf.

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The book is dead, long live the book.

Digital technology has certainly had a profound effect on the traditional book publishing and retailing industries, but has it also given the book a new lease of life?

At one point it looked as if the rise of e-books at knock-down prices and e-readers like Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook posed an existential threat to book publishers and sellers.

"Literature found itself at war with the internet," as Jim Hinks, digital editor of Comma Press, succinctly puts it.

But contrary to expectations, the printed book is still surviving alongside its upstart e-book cousin, and technology is helping publishers and retailers reach new audiences and find new ways to tell stories.

Print fights back?

While there can be no denying that printed book sales have taken a massive hit with the rise of digital, there is some evidence that the rate of decline is slowing and that the excitement over e-readers is subsiding.

Kindle sales - peaking at 13.44 million in 2011 - fell back to 9.7 million in 2012 and have plateaued since. Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader has been losing about $70m (£45m) a year and the US bookseller has been trying - and failing - to find a buyer for the division.

In the UK, roughly £1.7bn was spent on print books last year, compared with £393m on e-books, says Nielsen Book Research's Scott Morton. The digital newcomers' share of the market seems to have settled at about 30%.

On the high street, Waterstones saw physical book sales grow 5% over the Christmas period compared with the year before, while Foyles saw sales rise 8.1%.

The era of the printed book, it would seem, is far from over. But a lot depends on the sector you're looking at.

Adult fiction - particularly romantic and erotic - has migrated strongly to the e-book, whereas cookery and religious books still do well in print, as do books with illustrations. All for fairly obvious reasons.

Does format matter?

There are plenty of services out there trying to bridge the gap between the physical and the digital, extending the definition of what a book is.

In 2014, a personalised publishing experiment won the largest equity deal ever on the BBC Dragons' Den TV programme.

The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name - a printed book that could be digitally individualised to include the name of the child reading it - went on to be the top-selling children's picture book in Britain and Australia.

Spanish company SeeBook offers e-books as physical cards that can be bought online or in bookshops like other gift cards. Simply scan the QR code in the card with your smartphone or tablet to download the book.

"Some book stores still see digital as the big monster that's going to eat them, and prefer to put their head into the sand," says SeeBook director Dr Rosa Sala Rose.

London-based tech start-up Bookindy is using technology to encourage people back to struggling local bookshops.

It does this with a Chrome browser plug-in - each time you search Amazon for a book, a window pops up saying how much it would cost at your nearest independent bookseller.

Founder William Cookson, who describes himself as "just an average sort of book reader", says his creation took just three days to code.

It helped that he could tap in to an existing network of 350 independent British bookshops called Hive, which enables retailers to check stock and fulfil orders.

Serial revival

Digital is also reviving some centuries-old publishing ideas, says Anna Rafferty, until recently head of Penguin Books Digital.

Just as Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers was published in instalments in 1836, so Serial, a prizewinning US murder story, was podcast last year in 12 episodes, to great acclaim.

"Digital technology and the rise in the digital reading culture has allowed authors and publishers many more new creative opportunities to develop 'the book' further and delight readers," she says.

"It also allows authors to publish directly, to connect intimately with their readers and, crucially, to create new ways of telling their stories."

The Pigeonhole - launched in October by former Random House employee Anna Jean Hughes and partner Jacob Cockcroft - serialises books and enables readers to share comments and interact with the authors, all via an app. It's like a digital book club.

In a similar vein, Manchester-based MacGuffin from Comma Press acts like a Spotify for books - you can hear authors reading their stories out loud. Its analytics reveal what gets read where, and at what point people lose interest.

Readers can append tags to a story - "sci fi", "dystopian", or "feminist", for example - and use these to discover other new fiction, much in the same way someone might browse through a physical bookshop.

Digital distraction

Competition from mobile devices is one reason for Kindle sales levelling off.

"With mobile phones, screens are so much bigger, and the experience not as garish as it used to be," says Mr Hinks.

But although smartphones are convenient - you can buy and download a book in seconds - they can also be very distracting, posing an added challenge to e-book sellers.

Books on electronic devices "compete with games, news, and social media, and so need to be slicker," says Laura Summers, co-founder of BookMachine, a popular publishing networking website.

To hook people into reading, another start-up, Rook, is offering access to free e-books at wi-fi hotspots, such as London Underground stations, participating coffee shops and retailers.

"By the time they have to leave and go off about their life", says co-founder Curtis Moran, "they'll be so hooked into the book they're going to have to buy it."

He compares his start-up to a traditional bookshop, where you can sit and read for as long as you wish, but have to pay if you want to take the book with you.

So the book isn't dead; technology is simply helping it evolve beyond its physical confines.

Long live the book.

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The book is dead, long live the book. Digital technology has certainly had a profound effect on the traditional book publishing and retailing industries, but has it also given the book a new lease of life?

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Ten years ago, few imagined that by decade's end, people would be reading novels on cell phones. A lot has changed in the book world.

"Over the last couple of years, I've really noticed if I sit down with a book, after a few paragraphs, I'll say, 'You know, where's the links? Where's the e-mail? Where's all the stuff going on?' " says writer Nicholas Carr. "And it's kind of sad."

Carr says he's thought of himself as a serious reader all his life, but in an article in The Atlantic, he argued that the Internet is training us to read in a distracted and disjointed way. But does that mean writers will have to change the way they write to capture the attention of an audience accustomed to this new way of reading? Carr thinks the answer is yes, and he looks to the past to make his point.

"When printed books first became popular, thanks to Gutenberg's press, you saw this great expansion of eloquence and experimentation," says Carr. "All of which came out of the fact that here was a technology that encouraged people to read deeply, with great concentration and focus. And as we move to the new technology of the screen ... it has a very different effect, an almost opposite effect, and you will see a retreat from the sophistication and eloquence that characterized the printed page."

As digital platforms proliferate, writers are trying to figure out how to use them. Novelist Rick Moody recently wrote a story on the social networking site Twitter. Moody says he got intrigued by the idea of writing in abbreviated form to fit within the 140-character limitations of each Twitter post.

"I began to see that trying to write within this tiny little frame, 140 characters, was kind of like trying to write haiku. It's very poetical in its compaction, and it kind of got under my skin, and I kept thinking, 'Wouldn't it be fun to try and work with this?' " Moody says.

His flirtation with Twitter was not entirely successful. The delivery of the story went awry, and some industry insiders were bombarded with repetitive tweets. Still, Moody doesn't regret the experiment. But he does have doubts about Twitter's literary potential.

"It forced me to try to imply more narrative than I could actually include in the piece, because I was so stuck in this little box. It's hard to have dialogue between characters in the confines of the Twitter box," Moody says. "That was all fun. Whether I think Twitter is going to be a great vehicle for fiction, I'd say no."

A lot of writers are trying their hand at Twitter books - both on the Web and in print - but Time magazine book reviewer Lev Grossman thinks it's a passing fad. Asked what might have some staying power, Grossman suggests the cell phone novel. Written on cell phones and meant to be read on them, many of these books are best-sellers in Japan. The authors are usually young women, and romance is the main theme.

"They tend to be narratively very propulsive, [and] not very interested in style and beautiful language," Grossman says. "There tends to be a lot of drama and melodrama, sex and violence. They grab your attention, and they don't really let it go."

Apart from Twitter books and cell phone novels, Grossman, who is also a novelist, says the real challenge for writers is electronic-book readers like the Kindle. He says the increasingly popular devices force people to read books in a different way.

"They scroll and scroll and scroll. You don't have this business of handling pages and turning them and savoring them." Grossman says that particular function of the e-book leads to a certain kind of reading and writing: "Very forward moving, very fast narrative ... and likewise you don't tend to linger on the language. When you are seeing a word or a sentence on the screen, you tend to go through it, you extract the data, and you move on."

Grossman thinks that tendency not to linger on the language also affects the way people react to a book when they are deciding whether to buy it: More purchases will be based on brief excerpts.

"It will be incumbent on novelists to hook readers right away," says Grossman. "You won't be allowed to do a kind of tone poem overture, you're going to want to have blood on the wall by the end of the second paragraph. And I think that's something writers will have to adapt to, and the challenge will be to use this powerfully narrative form, this pulpy kind of mode, to say important things."

Grossman, Moody and Carr all believe that traditional books will still be around for a long time, and that some of the changes that may occur in writing will be more evolutionary than revolutionary. But it's hard to know, says Carr, whether traditional books - and the people who read and write them - will have much influence on the culture in the future.

"The real question is," wonders Carr, "is that segment of the population going to just dwindle and be on the periphery of the culture rather than at the center, which is where printed books have stood for centuries now?"

Perhaps we'll have to wait another 10 years to find out.

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How E-Books Will Change Reading And Writing

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The Kindle and other electronic reading devices have already started to make their mark, but they may begin to change the very words authors commit to posterity. Lynn Neary talks to Rick Moody, Lev Grossman and Nicholas Carr about the way these devices are shaping the publishing world.

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At the beginning of the 2010s, the world seemed to be poised for an ebook revolution.

The AmazonKindle, which was introduced in 2007, effectively mainstreamed ebooks.By 2010, it was clear that ebooks weren't just a passing fad, but were here to stay. They appeared poised to disrupt the publishing industry on a fundamental level. Analysts confidently predicted that millennials would embrace ebooks with open arms and abandon print books, that ebook sales would keep rising to take up more and more market share, that the price of ebooks would continue to fall, and that publishing would be forever changed.

Instead, at the other end of the decade, ebook sales seem to have stabilized at around 20 percent of total book sales, with print sales making up the remaining 80 percent. "Five or 10 years ago," says Andrew Albanese, a senior writer at trade magazine Publishers Weekly and the author of The Battle of $9.99, "you would have thought those numbers would have been reversed."

And in part, Albanese tells Vox in a phone interview, that's because the digital natives of Gen Z and the millennial generation have very little interest in buying ebooks. "They're glued to their phones, they love social media, but when it comes to reading a book, they want John Green in print," he says. The people who are actually buying ebooks? Mostly boomers. "Older readers are glued to their e-readers," says Albanese. "They don't have to go to the bookstore. They can make the font bigger. It's convenient."

Ebooks aren't only selling less than everyone predicted they would at the beginning of the decade. They also cost more than everyone predicted they would - and consistently, they cost more than their print equivalents. On Amazon as I'm writing this, a copy of Sally Rooney's Normal People costs $12.99 as an ebook, but only $11.48 as a hardcover. And increasingly, such disparities aren't an exception. They're the rule.

So what happened? How did the apparently inevitable ebook revolution fail to come to pass?

To figure out the answers, we'll have to dive in deep to a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice in 2012 against Apple - newly entered into the ebook market with the advent of the iPad - and five of what was then the Big Six publishing houses. The Department of Justice accused Apple and the publishers of colluding to fix ebook prices against Amazon, and although the DOJ won its case in court, the pricing model that Apple and the publishers created together would continue to dominate the industry, creating unintended ripple effects.

The case of US v. Apple encapsulates the dysfunction of the last decade of publishing. It's a story about what we're willing to pay for books - and about an industry that is growing ever more consolidated, with fewer and fewer companies taking up more and more market share. What happened to the ebook in the 2010s is the story of the contraction of American publishing.

"To my mind it's game over for this business."

When the Kindle entered the marketplace in 2007, Amazon had a simple sales pitch: Anyone with a Kindle could buy all the ebooks they wanted through the online marketplace, and many of those ebooks - in fact, all New York Times best-sellers - would cost no more than $9.99.

$9.99 is a steal for a new book. At the time, most hardcovers were averaging a list price of about $26, and many cost more. But for Amazon, this price point was an apparent no-brainer. The first generation Kindle was expensive, and value conscious customers needed some incentive to buy into it. Why would anyone spend $399 on an e-reader if they couldn't expect to make up at least part of the cost in a discount on ebooks?

And while this point is often glossed over, Amazon was actually following a precedent set by publishers in its pricing model. In her opinion for US v. Apple, Judge Denise Cote noted that before 2009, most publishers discounted ebooks by 20 percent from the price of a hardcover, which often led to a suggested list price of around $9.99.

But by 2009, publishers had changed their minds. Now they considered the idea of $9.99 ebooks to be an existential threat. Printing and binding and shipping - the costs that ebooks eliminated - accounted for only two dollars of the cost of a hardcover, publishers argued. So the ebook for a $20 hardcover book should cost no less than $18. And according to publishers, by setting the price of an ebook at $9.99, Amazon was training readers to undervalue books.

"The big concern - and it's a massive concern - is the $9.99 pricing point," David Young, the CEO of Hachette Book Group USA, told the New Yorker in 2010. "If it's allowed to take hold in the consumer's mind that a book is worth ten bucks, to my mind it's game over for this business."

Here's where book prices come from

Before we delve further into the weeds here, a quick primer on how book prices are set. Print books are generally sold under a wholesale model, which works like this: First, the publisher will set a suggested list price for a book; say, $20. Then it will sell the book to resellers and distributors for a discount off that suggested list price. So if Simon & Schuster wants to sell a $20 book to Amazon, Amazon might negotiate a discount of 40 percent for itself and end up paying Simon & Schuster only $12 for that book.

But once Amazon owns the book, it has the right to set whatever price it would like for consumers. The $20 list price that Simon & Schuster set was just a suggestion. Under the wholesale model, Amazon is free to decide to sell the book to readers for as little as a single dollar if it chooses to.

Until 2010, ebooks were sold through the wholesale model too. So if Simon & Schuster was publishing a $20 hardcover, they could choose to set a suggested list price of $18 for the ebook - two dollars less than the hardcover - and then sell that ebook to Amazon at a 40 percent discount for $10.80. And Amazon could, in turn, feel free to sell that ebook for $9.99 and swallow a loss of 81 cents.

To be clear, the numbers we're using here to get a handle on how pricing works are imaginary. (Amazon negotiates different discounts for itself at different times from different publishers, sometimes around 40 percent, but at other times higher and at other times lower.) But we do know that Amazon was making very, very little money off ebook sales in 2010, and was in fact probably losing money on most of them.

For a company as big as Amazon, it's perfectly reasonable to lose money on a new initiative if that will help them dominate the market space. But publishers were terrified of what would happen once Amazon had established itself as the only game in town, ebook-wise.

Would Amazon keep pushing prices ever further down? And once publishers had nowhere else to sell their ebooks, would Amazon start demanding lower and lower discounts from them to subsidize those low prices? Would Amazon start to demand that publishers sell them ebooks for $5 so that it could maintain that customer-facing $9.99 price point but now make a profit?

It was in the midst of this tense and paranoid atmosphere that Apple made its entrée into the ebook market.

Publishers hoped that iBooks would do for books what iTunes did for music. It didn't quite work out that way.

In 2010, Apple launched the iPad, and with it, the modern tablet computer. And part of what made the iPad so exciting was that it contained iBooks, an app that publishers were hoping would do for ebooks what iTunes had done for music: be so convenient and easy to use that consumers would flock to it rather than turn to piracy. Crucially, publishers hoped that iBooks would be so streamlined and sleek that it could undermine Amazon's book-selling dominance.

Apple was offering publishers an incentive to root for it over Amazon. With its App Store, Apple had established a resale model that worked differently from the wholesale model publishers were used to. It was called the agency model, and it worked like this: publishers would decide on what the list price for their book should be, and then put it up for sale at that price in the iBooks store. Apple would take a 30 percent commission on every sale.

Apple wasn't willing to sell ebooks for $18, but it thought a cap of $14.99 was perfectly reasonable. And if publishers decided to go along with Apple's plan, they could set a list price of $14.99 for an ebook and be sure that no one in the iBooks store would ever discount it without the publisher's express permission. Apple, meanwhile, would pocket $4.50 from each sale.

But Apple couldn't enter the ebook market while charging consumers five dollars more per unit than its biggest competitor was. It needed some assurance that no one would have a cheaper product than it had. So it made a deal with five of the Big Six publishers (Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan; Random House, then the biggest trade publishing house, abstained): They could all sign on to Apple's agency model, as long as they guaranteed that they'd also use that same agency model with every other retailer they worked with. That way, Amazon, too, would be forced to sell its ebooks for $14.99 - and if it refused, publishers could withhold their ebooks from Amazon and make them exclusive to Apple.

Publishers agreed to the deal. And just like that, everything changed.

"That's the kind of thing that's very clearly illegal"

"Overnight, because of this conspiracy, ebook prices went from $9.99 to $14.99," says Albanese. "That set the tone for the future of the ebook right there."

The word "conspiracy" is important here. As far as publishers were concerned, they weren't conspiring; they were just acquiring the leverage they needed to deal with a company they considered an existential threat to their business. They were preventing Amazon from forming a monopoly, and thus they were promoting a healthier economy for books and for the American book-buying public, too.

According to the Department of Justice, however, publishers were conspiring. They were colluding with Apple to fix prices.

"They [publishers] agreed with each other what the resale prices would be for their electronic books," says Christopher Sagers, a law professor at Cleveland State University and the author of United States v. Apple: Competition in America. "That's a horizontal pricing conspiracy, and generally speaking, that's the kind of thing that's very clearly illegal. In fact, it's often prosecuted criminally."

In 2012, the Department of Justice sued both the five publishers who had agreed to Apple's agency model plan and Apple itself. And the presiding judge, Denise Cote, was not impressed by the argument that Apple and the conspiring publishers had only acted to prevent a monopoly. "Another company's alleged violation of antitrust laws," she wrote in her opinion, "is not an excuse for engaging in your own violations of the law." She imposed sanctions of $166 million on publishers to compensate those who bought ebooks at inflated prices.

But while Cote's sanctions required publishers to briefly modify the agency model so that resellers could set their own prices, within a few years, those sanctions expired. Today, the agency model that Apple developed is once again the standard sales model for ebooks.

"The Department of Justice suit in hindsight was corporate squabble," says Albanese. "It hasn't done much to address Amazon's market position. Would the ebook trajectory have continued to grow had that suit not happened? Probably we would be in about the same place."

"The answer is to sue both of them"

Ironically, by winning when it comes to ebook pricing, publishing seems to have hurt its ability to convince readers that print books are worth spending money on.

"Amazon can still discount whatever they like on the print side," explains Jane Friedman, a publishing consultant and the author of The Business of Being a Writer. On the ebook side, however, Amazon now lists publisher-mandated prices, often with the petulant italic addition " Price set by seller." "So the market is very weird, and often the ebook costs more than the print," Friedman says. "Sometimes it feels like Amazon is trying to make the publishers look ridiculous."

And because ebooks are often more expensive than Amazon's heavily discounted print books, traditional publishing's ebook sales seem to have fallen off - and Amazon is more dominant than ever in the print book market. "It's so much cheaper," says Friedman.

In this new market, high ebook prices make it harder than ever for young authors in particular to survive. "The split has really hurt debut novelists," says Friedman. "It's hard to ask readers to take a chance on someone unproven at that high price point, and since the ebook market does lean towards fiction, it's hurting the new people."

Self-published authors, meanwhile, are flourishing. They're allowed to set their own ebook prices just like publishers are - and consistently, they set their prices very, very low. "It's a shadow market," Friedman says. "Novelists with huge backlists go and put them out as ebooks independently. And if a reader has a choice between reading this great series at $2.99 a pop or a $12 novel, what are they going to pick?"

Antitrust law professor Christopher Sagers argues that the outcome of the DOJ'sebooks case shows that the real problem with the industry is not just that Amazon has a monopoly. The big trade publishers, he says, have a monopoly too.

"There used to be hundreds of publishing companies. They're now mostly owned by five," Sagers says. (After that Department of Justice lawsuit, Penguin merged with Random House, and the Big Six became the Big Five.) "Why are ebooks expensive? It's not because Amazon is vicious. It's because there's no competition at the wholesale level."

For Sagers, the solution to the ebooks problem was not to let publishers fix prices to prevent an Amazon ebook monopoly. He thinks that instead, the government should have prosecuted everyone involved. "Critics of the case all said, 'It's terrible to sue the publishers and not let them have a cartel if you're going to let Amazon have a monopoly,'" he told Vox over the phone. "I say that's crazy. The answer is to sue both of them."

The Big Five publishers "are huge, and they have been able to put in place practices that are kind of unfair and that authors have to put up with," Friedman allows. "That said, they need that kind of size to be able to effectively deal with something like Amazon. If you look at an indie publisher, I wouldn't want to be one of them."

Friedman points to the way the entire book market has contracted and consolidated itself, so that nearly every phase of a book's life is dominated by a tiny subset of companies. "People complain about Ingram's terms, too, because nobody can compete with Ingram," Friedman says.

Ingram is a distributor, and it's one of the only companies that currently exists to handle book distribution: It's the Amazon or the Penguin Random House of this portion of the process of putting books out into the world. In December 2018, Publishers Weekly reported that Ingram had begun putting out feelers on buying Baker & Taylor, one of its competitors; this May, Baker & Taylor stopped selling to bookstores. Ingram now faces virtually zero retail competition.

Ingram benefits from an industry that has consolidated to the point that there is almost no competition, and entering the marketplace as a new and independent player is nearly impossible, along every single level. In that, it's in a position almost identical to that of both Amazon and the Big Five.

"You have to accept them, because who else are you going to go to?" Friedman says. "It's hard to get around these last men standing."

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The 2010s were supposed to bring the ebook revolution. It never quite came.

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Publishing spent the 2010s fighting tooth and nail against ebooks. There were unintended consequences.

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Summary of findings

One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year, and this number increased following a gift-giving season that saw a spike in the ownership of both tablet computers and e-book reading devices such as the original Kindles and Nooks. In mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an e-book in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%.

The rise of e-books in American culture is part of a larger story about a shift from printed to digital material. Using a broader definition of e-content in a survey ending in December 2011, some 43% of Americans age 16 and older say they have either read an e-book in the past year or have read other long-form content such as magazines, journals, and news articles in digital format on an e-book reader, tablet computer, regular computer, or cell phone.

Those who have taken the plunge into reading e-books stand out in almost every way from other kinds of readers. Foremost, they are relatively avid readers of books in all formats: 88% of those who read e-books in the past 12 months also read printed books. Compared with other book readers, they read more books. They read more frequently for a host of reasons: for pleasure, for research, for current events, and for work or school. They are also more likely than others to have bought their most recent book, rather than borrowed it, and they are more likely than others to say they prefer to purchase books in general, often starting their search online.

The growing popularity of e-books and the adoption of specialized e-book reading devices are documented in a series of new nationally representative surveys by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project that look at the public's general reading habits, their consumption of print books, e-books and audiobooks, and their attitudes about the changing ways that books are made available to the public.

Most of the findings in this report come from a survey of 2,986 Americans ages 16 and older, conducted on November 16-December 21, 2011, that extensively focused on the new terrain of e-reading and people's habits and preferences. Other surveys were conducted between January 5-8 and January 12-15, 2012 to see the extent to which adoption of e-book reading devices (both tablets and e-readers) might have grown during the holiday gift-giving season and those growth figures are reported here. Finally, between January 20-Febuary 19, 2012, we re-asked the questions about the incidence of book reading in the previous 12 months in order to see if there had been changes because the number of device owners had risen so sharply. All data cited in this report are from the November/December survey unless we specifically cite the subsequent surveys. This work was underwritten by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Key findings:

A fifth of American adults have read an e-book in the past year and the number of e-book readers grew after a major increase in ownership of e-book reading devices and tablet computers during the holiday gift-giving season. A pre-holiday survey found that 17% of Americans age 18 and older had read an e-book in the previous 12 months and a post-holiday survey found that the number had grown to 21%. This coincides with significant increases in ownership of e-book reading devices and tablet computers over the holiday gift-giving season. Ownership of e-book readers like the original Kindle and Nook jumped from 10% in December to 19% in January and ownership of tablet computers such as iPads and Kindle Fires increased from 10% in mid-December to 19% in January. In all, 29% of Americans age 18 and older own at least one specialized device for e-book reading - either a tablet or an e-book reader.

The average reader of e-books says she has read 24 books (the mean number) in the past 12 months, compared with an average of 15 books by a non-e-book consumer. Some 78% of those ages 16 and older say they read a book in the past 12 months. Those readers report they have read an average (or mean number) of 17 books in the past year and 8 books as a median (midpoint) number.

Those who read e-books report they have read more books in all formats. They reported an average of 24 books in the previous 12 months and had a median of 13 books. Those who do not read e-books say they averaged 15 books in the previous year and the median was 6 books.

For device owners, those who own e-book readers also stand out. They say they have read an average of 24 books in the previous year (vs. 16 books by those who do not own that device). They report having read a median of 12 books (vs. 7 books by those who do not own the device).

Interestingly, there were not major differences between tablet owners and non-owners when it came to the volume of books they say they had read in the previous 12 months.

Overall, those who reported reading the most books in the past year include: women compared with men; whites compared with minorities; well-educated Americans compared with less-educated Americans; and those age 65 and older compared with younger age groups.

30% of those who read e-content say they now spend more time reading, and owners of tablets and e-book readers particularly stand out as reading more now. Some 41% of tablet owners and 35% of e-reading device owners said they are reading more since the advent of e-content. Fully 42% of readers of e-books said they are reading more now that long-form reading material is available in digital format. The longer people have owned an e-book reader or tablet, the more likely they are to say they are reading more: 41% of those who have owned either device for more than a year say they are reading more vs. 35% of those who have owned either device for less than six months who say they are reading more.

Men who own e-reading devices and e-content consumers under age 50 are particularly likely to say they are reading more.

The prevalence of e-book reading is markedly growing, but printed books still dominate the world of book readers. In our December 2011 survey, we found that 72% of American adults had read a printed book and 11% listened to an audiobook in the previous year, compared with the 17% of adults who had read an e-book.

There are four times more people reading e-books on a typical day now than was the case less than two years ago. On any given day, 45% of book readers are reading a book in one format or another. And there has been a shift in the format being used by those who are reading on a typical day. In June 2010, 95% of those reading books "yesterday" were reading print books and 4% were reading e-books. In December 2011, 84% of the "yesterday" readers were reading print books and 15% were reading e-books.

Those who own e-book readers and tablets are avid readers of books in all formats. On any given day, 49% of those who own e-book readers like the original Kindles and Nooks are reading an e-book. And 59% of those e-reader owners said they were reading a printed book. On any given day, 39% of tablet owners are reading an e-book and 64% were reading a printed book.

E-book reading happens across an array of devices, including smartphones. In our December survey we found that e-book readers age 16 and older were just as likely to have read an e-book on their computers as had read e-book reader devices specifically made for e-book consumption. Cell phones are reading devices, too:

42% of readers of e-books in the past 12 months said they consume their books on a computer

41% of readers of e-books consume their books on an e-book reader like original Kindles or Nooks

29% of readers of e-books consume their books on their cell phones

23% of readers of e-books consume their books on a tablet computer.

In a head-to-head competition, people prefer e-books to printed books when they want speedy access and portability, but print wins out when people are reading to children and sharing books with others. We asked a series of questions about format preferences among the 14% of Americans age 16 and up who in the past 12 months have read both printed books and e-books.

As a rule, dual-platform readers preferred e-books when they wanted to get a book quickly, when they were traveling or commuting, and when they were looking for a wide selection. However, print was strongly preferred over e-books when it came to reading to children and sharing books with others. When asked about reading books in bed, the verdict was split: 45% prefer reading e-books in bed, while 43% prefer print.

The availability of e-content is an issue to some. Of the 43% of Americans who consumed e-books in the last year or have read other long-form content on digital devices, a majority say they find the e-content is available in the format they want. Yet 23% say they find the material they are seeking "only sometimes," "hardly ever," or never available in the format they want:

20% of e-content consumers say the material they want is always available in the format they want.

50% of e-content consumers say the material they want is available "most of the time."

17% of e-content consumers say the material they want is available "only sometimes."

3% of e-content consumers say the material they want is available "hardly ever."

4% of e-content consumers say the material they want is never available.

The majority of book readers prefer to buy rather than borrow. A majority of print readers (54%) and readers of e-books (61%) prefer to purchase their own copies of these books. Meanwhile, most audiobook listeners prefer to borrow their audiobooks; just one in three audiobook listeners (32%) prefer to purchase audiobooks they want to listen to, while 61% prefer to borrow them. Those who own e-book reading devices and tablet computers are more likely than others to prefer to purchase.

As for the most recent book people read:

48% bought it. Owners of e-book readers and tablets were much more likely than others to have bought it.

24% borrowed it from family, friends, or co-workers.

14% borrowed it from a library.

13% got it from another source.

For internet users who read e-books, online bookstores are the first stop. Asked where they start their search for an e-book they want to read, 75% of e-book readers start their search at an online bookstore or website. Some 12% start at the library.

Overall, people read for a variety of reasons. Americans cite a range of motives for their reading and it is often the case that people point to multiple reasons for reading. As a rule, technology users, and especially tablet owners and those who own e-book readers, are more likely than non-owners to read for every purpose.

80% of Americans age 16 and older say they read at least occasionally for pleasure. Some 36% read for pleasure every day or almost every day.

78% say they read at least occasionally to keep up with current events. People read most frequently for this reason: 50% say they do it daily or almost every day.

74% say they read at least occasionally in order to do research on specific topics that interest them. Some 24% read for this reason daily or almost every day.

56% say they read at least occasionally for work or school. Some 36% read for work or school daily or almost every day.

Why people like to read. Asked to tell us what they like most about book reading, those who had read a book in the past 12 months gave a host of reasons that ranged from the highly practical to the sublime.

26% of those who had read a book in the past 12 months said that what they enjoyed most was learning, gaining knowledge, and discovering information.

15% cited the pleasures of escaping reality, becoming immersed in another world, and the enjoyment they got from using their imaginations.

12% said they liked the entertainment value of reading, the drama of good stories, the suspense of watching a good plot unfold.

12% said they enjoyed relaxing while reading and having quiet time.

6% liked the variety of topics they could access via reading and how they could find books that particularly interested them.

4% said they enjoy finding spiritual enrichment through reading and expanding their worldview.

3% said they like being mentally challenged by books.

2% cited the physical properties of books - their feel and smell - as a primary pleasure.

Demographics of e-book readers. In our survey ending in February 2012, we found that 29% of adult book readers had read an e-book in the past 12 months. Overall, that comes to 21% of all adults. Those who read e-books are more likely to be under age 50, have some college education, and live in households earning more than $50,000.

Those who own e-book reading devices stand out from other book readers and there are sometimes differences among device owners in their reading habits.
Our December 2011 survey found that those age 16 and older who own tablets or e-book reading devices are more likely than others to read for every reason: for pleasure, for personal research, for current events, and for work or school.

Some 89% of e-reading device owners say they read at least occasionally for pleasure, compared with 80% of all Americans 16 and older. Some 49% read for pleasure every day or almost every day (vs. 36% of all those 16 and older).

Similarly, 89% of e-reading device owners say they read at least occasionally in order to do research on specific topics that interest them (vs. 74% of all those 16 and older). Some 36% read for this reason daily or almost every day, compared with 24% of the general population.

Some 88% of e-reading device owners (vs. 78% of all those 16 and older) say they read at least occasionally to keep up with current events. People read most frequently for this reason: 64% say they do it daily or almost every day (vs. 50% of all 16 and older).

Some 71% of e-reading device owners say they read for work or school (vs. 56% of all 16 and older); almost half (49%) do so daily (compared with 36%).

Device owners read more often. On any given day 56% of those who own e-book reading devices are reading a book, compared with 45% of the general book-reading public who are reading a book on a typical day. Some 63% of the e-book device owners who are reading on any given day are reading a printed book; 42% are reading an e-book; and 4% are listening to an audio book.

Device owners are more likely to buy books. Some 61% of e-reading device owners said they purchased the most recent book they read, compared with 48% of all readers. Another 15% said they had borrowed their most recent book from a friend or family member (vs. 24% of all readers), and 10% said they borrowed it from a library (vs.14% of all readers).

Asked their preference for obtaining books in all formats, e-book reading device owners were more likely to say they prefer to purchase than to borrow books in any format - print, digital, or audio. In related fashion, they are also more likely to say they start their searches for e-books at online bookstores.

Book recommendations. Overall, owners of e-reading devices are more likely than all Americans 16 and older to get book recommendations from people they knew (81% vs. 64%) and bookstore staff (31% vs. 23%). In addition, compared with the general public, owners of e-reading devices who use the internet are also more likely to get recommendations from online bookstores or other websites (56% vs. 34%).

Other key findings:

Amazon's Kindle Fire, a new tablet computer introduced in late 2011, grew in market share from 5% of the market in mid-December to 14% of the tablet market in mid-January. This change also grew as the overall size of the tablet market roughly doubled.

Among those who do not own tablet computers or e-book reading devices, the main reasons people say they do not own the devices are: 1) they don't need or want one, 2) they can't afford one, 3) they have enough digital devices already, or 4) they prefer printed books.

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21% of Americans have read an e-book. The increasing availability of e-content is prompting some to read more than in the past and to prefer buying books to borrowing them.

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Michael Mace is a principal at Rubicon Consulting, and a former executive at Palm, Apple, and Silicon Graphics. This post was originally posted on his blog, and his reproduced with permission.

It's a great time for ebooks.

There are at least six ebook reader devices on the market or in preparation. A major business magazine predicts that up to seven million of these devices will be sold next year.

A major consulting firm says ebook sales will account for ten percent of the publishing market in five years. And an executive at the leading computing firm predicts that 90 percent of all publishing will switch to electronic form in just 20 years.

But the year isn't 2010 - it's 2000, and the ebook market is about to go into hibernation for a decade. What went wrong, and what can the failure tell us about the prospects for ebooks in 2010?

I had a front row seat for the last generation of ebooks: In 1999 I was at Softbook (one of the early ebook reader companies), and later I interacted with the folks at Peanut Press (an ebook publisher) after they were bought by Palm. My short summary of the lessons I learned: Although some of the barriers that stopped ebooks in 2000 have been reduced, most of them are still in place. So I think the market isn't likely to grow as quickly as many optimists are predicting. However, the economics of traditional publishing are very vulnerable to a paradigm change. That change is likely to happen later than most people expect, but once it happens it'll probably move very quickly indeed. So stay out of the avalanche zone.

Here are the details on why, and how to avoid the avalanche when it does happen.

Why ebooks failed in 2000

I know I'm going to get some comments reminding me that ebooks didn't ever completely fail. They've been around for a long time, and some people read books on their computers every day. Granted. But the market for ebooks and ebook reader devices utterly failed to take off the way that most observers expected in 2000. It's important to understand why, or we may be at risk of repeating history.

I think the failure of ebooks ten years ago was due to five problems:

1. Not enough ebooks. The core customers for an ebook reader are reading enthusiasts, meaning they like to read a lot of books. If you ask them how many books they'd like to have available for their reader, they'll look at you funny and say, "All of them, of course. What's the point in paying for an ebook reader device that doesn't let you any book you want to read?"

In 2000, we had a huge problem with ebook availability. They were expensive to convert to ebook format (hundreds of dollars per title), and publishers were reluctant to make that sort of investment. I don't have any statistics on the number of ebooks available back then, but I remember that it was an ongoing, major problem for the company.

Today, the situation is better but not ideal. Looking at the New York Times bestseller list for February 28, all but one of the top 10 books in hardcover fiction and nonfiction were available in ebook format. However, there is still a problem with the timing of availability. Barnes & Noble had 15 books on its "Coming Soon" list for March 10, but only six of them were to be released as ebooks at the same time as they came out in print. That's a poor ratio, and would be a significant annoyance to an ebook user.

Looking at older books, availability seems to be hit or miss. Many more books are available in ebook format today than in 2000, but there are weird gaps. For example, many of the most popular works of Robert Heinlein (one of the leading science fiction authors of all time) are not currently available in the Kindle store, but are available for Barnes & Noble's Nook device. For Isaac Asimov (another all-time great), only a small subset of his work is available electronically from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

This sort of confusion frustrates many ebook users.

2. Ebooks were too expensive. Many book buyers feel they get extra value when they buy a hardcover book. It's more substantial than a paperback, and has a nice slipcover. The pages don't turn yellow, and the printing is generally very clear. If they like the book, they can put it on a bookcase somewhere to show their friends how tasteful they are. An ebook has none of these benefits. To many users, it feels more like a paperback - disposable, intangible, slightly cheap. But in 2000, many ebooks were priced the same as hardcover books.

Combine high book pricing with limited availability, and most people didn't feel ebook readers were a reasonable value. The market stalled right there.

The problem with ebook vs. hardcover pricing is that publishers bundle two sorts of value when they create a hardcover book: The physical product is more impressive, and you get earlier availability of the book, often a year or more before the paperback version comes out. Unfortunately, book buyers think most of the extra value they're paying for from a hardcover is the physical book. Meanwhile, publishers (and authors) often think the main value of a hardcover is early availability. Many authors and publishers don't want to say this to the public, but hardcover books are a tax on the most enthusiastic fans of an author.

E-publishing breaks that cozy little arrangement, by separating the early availability value from the better production value. Publishers couldn't figure out what to do about that in 2000. So they often did the conservative thing, pricing ebooks the same as hardcovers. To ebook customers, that felt like exploitation, if not outright fraud.

It still feels that way today.

The situation now is somewhat improved, in that ebook prices are often somewhat lower than hardcover prices. But it has not been resolved. For example, Amazon lists Payback Time by Phil Town as a hot new release. Its list price is $26.99 and the ebook price is $13.36, so that looks like a huge discount. But the hardcover version is already being discounted to $14.57. So the ebook price is about the same as the hardcover's street price. That's not acceptable to a lot of ebook customers.

Until very recently, Amazon had been subsidizing down the price of most ebooks to $9.99 in an effort to deal with conflicts just like this, but that arrangement broke down when challenged by Macmillan. The result was a very nasty public spat in which Amazon briefly pulled all Macmillan books (paper and electronic) from its online store. That drove many book authors into a frenzy, with most of them siding with Macmillan (examples here and here and here).

What is it about the tech industry and authors? Both Amazon and Google have shown a unique ability to make authors bond with publishers, people they otherwise tend to view as parasitic scum.

The relationship between Amazon and Macmillan is very complicated, and I don't want to get into the details of their contracts here. There's ample evidence for labeling either one of them a villain and/or idiot if you want to. But my point is that ebook pricing remains screwed up today. Maybe not as uniformly screwed up as it was in 2000, but it's still a mess.

3. The hardware form factor was wrong. When ebook readers failed to sell well, ebook producers tried to focus on other electronic devices - PCs, PDAs, and smartphones.

The trouble is that for most people, the ergonomics and psychology of reading are wrong on computers and smartphones. A laptop is the wrong size and weight to create an immersive reading experience, and the backlit displays on most laptops create eyestrain compared to reading ink on paper.

PDAs and smartphones are too small for immersive reading for most people, and besides people are usually in a different mindset when they use a pocket device. They use it briefly, in short spurts throughout the day, when they are bored or need to find a bit of information. It's like the information equivalent of snacking. A reference book might be useful in this context, and holy books like the Bible sell well in electronic form because some people take comfort in reading a bit of them every day. But for most people, a pocket device isn't something that you'd curl up with for a couple of hours, the way you would with a book.

This is an area where we're obviously making a lot of progress. Amazon and Sony have both been willing to subsidize their tablet devices for years while the ebook market develops, and Apple and other big computer companies are now entering the tablet market, not to mention a host of smaller startups.

Just remember that most electronics companies are sheep. If tablets don't sell well, they will exit the market as quickly as they entered it.

4. Periodicals weren't ready. Although we call these devices "ebook readers," if you look at user attitudes and usage patterns, in many ways they are a better fit for reading periodicals (newspapers and magazines) than they are for books. Most printed magazines and newspapers are viewed as disposable, so many people don't object to paying the same price for an e-version as they do for the printed version. And most periodicals can be read in short bursts, which fits the usage pattern for mobile devices.

Even better, an e-magazine can get to the reader faster than a printed version, because it doesn't have to be printed and mailed.

When I was at Softbook, there was a lot of user interest in getting magazines on our devices. Unfortunately, very few were available, and the effort to get them converted started too late to save the company.

Today, there are electronic versions of a number of publications targeted at the ebook readers. But a couple of additional problems have surfaced. One is that often the e-versions are inferior to the printed versions. On the Kindle store, 64% of the reviews for the e-version of The Economist magazine are a single star (the lowest possible rating).

5. Poor marketing. In my opinion, the right way to create a technology product is to identify a group of customers who have a major problem, and to solve that problem decisively. It's not clear that ebooks, especially as they are constituted today, do that. Paper books simply aren't broken, from the perspective of most users.

A lot of the investment in ebook devices today seems to be driven more by strategy than by user needs. E-books are believed to be an important future business opportunity, and companies are maneuvering to be in position when that opportunity takes off.

The problem is, unless they solve a user problem, and communicate it to the users, the market won't take off in the first place. This tripped up the ebook companies in 2000, and I think it is still true today. Check out Amazon's pitch for why you should buy Kindle:

Can you spot the problem? It's a list of features, not a list of benefits. Now let's look at Sony:

They're doing a tiny bit better, in that they do list a user benefit. Unfortunately, how many people do you know who want to carry 350 books at one time? I call this situation "phantom value," and it's something that happens a lot to tech companies. They've made a product without really thinking through the value proposition. When it comes time to market it, they pick one feature of the product and try through brute force to persuade customers that they should care about it. Usually the only people they convince are themselves.

This same thing happened when the music industry was first trying to defend itself from MP3 players. There was a huge fuss over the superior audio quality of CDs, and a lot of people in the music industry put a lot of effort into talking up the quality aspect of CDs. The only problem was that the average music listener couldn't hear the difference and didn't care about it.

What it means for ebooks in 2010

Although ebooks are doing much better than they were in 2000, there are still very significant structural barriers to the broad adoption of ebooks. We're in a chicken and egg situation where the content isn't fully ready for use because there aren't enough device users to force investment, but people won't buy more devices until the content gets better. As long as Amazon and Sony continue to subsidize the market, I think it will continue to grow moderately. And I think the iPad and related tablet products may help. But overall, the prospects for near-term explosive growth don't look good.

What happens next, and what can we do about it?

First, let's talk about a couple of opportunities. Paper books published today are not broken, but there are a couple of notable places where the publishing industry as it works today really is breaking down, and ebooks could help.

Save the short story. The first problem is the market for short stories. I wrote about this several years ago at length ( link), so I won't repeat the whole situation here. But a quick summary is that the magazines that used to produce a lucrative market for short stories have mostly gone out of business or moved on to other sorts of content. As a result, authors have relatively little incentive to write short fiction these days.

Speaking as someone who grew up reading and appreciating short fiction, this is a loss for readers and an opportunity for e-reader devices. Short fiction is a great fit for e-readers because it can be consumed in small bites, and if authors could sell directly to their readers, the revenue could eventually be good enough that people would go back to writing short fiction. Plus it would give e-reader devices a real benefit - content that you can't get anywhere else.

What's missing is the marketplace to make that happen. We need the equivalent of an iTunes store for short stories, tied to a mass market tablet device.

Free the backlist. At the O'Reilly conference I heard a fascinating statistic from Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive: 70% of all the books ever written in English are out of print but still under copyright. In other words, you can't legally make copies of them, but there's not enough demand for them that the publishers can afford to reprint them. They are orphans.

These aren't just obscure books. In science fiction, my favorite category, award-winning books from the 1950s and 1960s are frequently out of print, and forget about finding less-known books even from major authors. The best you can do is a used book search, which if you're lucky will get you a smelly and dog-eared paperback in the mail. And those are the famous authors! Books from many others are unavailable in any form.

In my opinion, this is appalling. And it's also an opportunity.

Kahle is working on a project to let universities lend out electronic copies of the books in their stacks, which include many of these orphan books. As I understand it, the idea is that the library owns the right to lend out one copy of the book. If a central server keeps track of that single electronic copy, it's possible to legally read e-versions of orphaned books. It sounds like an incredibly cumbersome approach - and it is. But it's better than nothing, and once again it's producing content for e-readers that can't be obtained any other way.

The project is called BookServer, and 1,000 more books are being digitized every day ( link). It's the most hopeful thing I've heard about the future of libraries in years.

Rethink the periodical

The Internet is flooded with videos of prototype electronic magazines that publishers have been working on. Most of them look pretty similar - there's an electronic image that looks just like a printed magazine page. The user moves from page to page by swiping a finger back and forth on the device's screen. You can zoom in to look at a graphic more closely, and zoom out to a thumbnail view that shows several pages side by side. The pages include both ads and stories, just like the magazine. In some prototypes, static pictures are replaced by videos and animations. Most of the demo is made up of page swiping and zooming, and you're left thinking, "hey, that looks just like a print magazine on the screen."

I am reminded of this:

It's called the Horsey Horseless Carriage. Time Magazine wrote about it in 2007 (link). It was supposedly an early automobile design in which a horse's head (thankfully a carved wooden one rather than stuffed) was mounted on the front of an automobile. The idea was apparently to make the car look more like a horse-drawn carriage, so the real horses would not be frightened by it. Just as striking as the horse's head is the rest of the car's design. From the wheels to the body design to the weird tiller the driver uses to steer, it is a basically a horse-drawn carriage that has a motor affixed to it.

We laugh now because we know the carriage needed a total rethink to translate it into a car - everything from the wheels to the controls to the seat designs had to change radically. And yet when it's our turn to create something new, we create electronic magazines that look just like printed magazines.

It's a failure of the imagination, in my opinion. Most of the design of a magazine was driven by the economics of printing and mailing a paper publication. Why are the ads and text arranged the way they are? Because in a paper magazine, you can force people to skim past the ads while they look for the articles. Why is a magazine that particular size? Because that's what the post office will deliver, it fits easily in mailboxes, and it's a paper size we're used to handling. Why does it come out once a month or once a week? Because you have to bundle up a critical mass of content and ads before it makes financial sense to mail it. And on and on and on.

None of those assumptions apply to an electronic publication. They are all rules that we've absorbed from the print world, so deeply that we don't even think to question them. Some of those assumptions may still make sense in the electronic world, but many of them won't. One area where I feel strongly that our assumptions are faulty is advertising.

People reading paper magazines are used to fumbling past ads while they read. It's a standard part of the experience. But people using an electronic device have been conditioned by the web to expect to click and jump directly to the content they want. Making them flip through simulated electronic pages full of ads simply won't work. That means the ads in an electronic publication probably can't be as numerous as they are in a print publication. What's worse, the ads that pay the most money - the inside front cover and the back cover - don't even necessarily exist in an electronic publication.

I think some magazines believe they can force the current ad experience on users. Some of them even have persuaded themselves that readers see the ads as part of the value of the magazine (see my discussion of phantom value, above). But publications need to understand that they'll be competing with a new crop of publishers who grew up online and are not hamstrung by the same thinking.

The best example of this new thinking is Yahoo. It's very trendy to dismiss Yahoo these days because it's not Google, but in reality the company is a very different beast. Google is all about search and direct-response advertising associated with it. Yahoo is basically an electronic publisher supported by "display" ads - brand-building ads created by large national advertisers, targeted at the specific demographic groups Yahoo delivers.

Yahoo today runs a hugely successful electronic newspaper. It has a news section:

A finance section:

And a sports section:

All of them are totally supported by ads, with no subscription fee.

If you're a magazine or newspaper publisher, you may think that e-publishing finally gives you a path out of the free-web-content trap. But ask yourself what happens when companies like Yahoo realize they too can create electronic publications for ebook readers. Will they charge for subscriptions, or will they create completely ad-supported publications? What does that do to your business model?

I think the periodical has to be rethought much more thoroughly than it has been to date. At its core, the thing that makes a magazine or newspaper valuable to readers is its editorial staff - a group of writers, editors, and artists who work in synergy to produce a unified product. Rather than asking how to make a magazine electronic, we need to ask what must be built around an editorial staff to make it viable in the electronic world. I don't know what the result will be, but I'm pretty sure it won't look like a print magazine scanned and transferred to a screen.

Publishers: Rethink your value

Although publishers today are focusing on what ebooks do to their distribution channels, the real threat to them, in my opinion, is the likelihood that in the future authors will publish their books directly to the public, bypassing the entire publishing value chain. To understand this challenge, it's necessary to look at the current value chain for books...

An author typically gets about 12% of the list price of a book. The rest of the revenue is consumed by the distribution channel - the publisher's overhead, the cost of printing and shipping books, the expenses of the bookseller, etc. This is not to say that publishers and booksellers are getting rich. Typically a small number of bestselling books generate the revenue that covers the losses a publisher takes on everything else it publishes. Something similar happens to bookstores. The reality is that the whole publishing value chain is grossly inefficient - it absorbs a lot of cash, and almost no one gets rich from it.

This distribution chain was stable only when it was the sole way to get a book to a customer. It's already under attack by Amazon, which avoids the overhead of a physical bookstore; and by discount retailers who skim off the best-selling books, absorbing the revenue that formerly supported local bookstores. But that's only a prelude to what's coming.

Because authors get such a small percentage of the sales price of a book today, any system that let them capture more of the revenue from a book sale will be very attractive to them, even if it sells a lot fewer books.

The chart below illustrates my point. For simplicity, I've assumed a best-selling author who gets 15% of the book's revenue, a bit more than usual. The author's new book is going to sell 100 printed copies through the traditional retail channel at $20 each. That means the total revenue for the book will be $2,000, of which the author gets $300.

But if the author sells the book direct to the public as an ebook, he or she will be able to keep 70% to 80% of the revenue (because that's what the online content stores are typically returning). If the store's cut is 25%, the author will make $300 after he or she sells only 20 books.

The red and blue bars show the author's revenue as ebook readers reach various levels of penetration in the book-buying population. The chart's kind of complex, but its main message is that once e-readers are in the hands of about 20% of the book-buying public, an author has a financial incentive to sell direct rather than selling through a publisher.

Fortunately for publishers, e-readers are far below 20% penetration today. They're probably at about 2%. So the business is stable for the moment. In fact, it's probably a little more stable than a lot of publishers believe. We're likely to have a latency period of at least several years while the e-reader installed base gradually grows. During this time nothing terribly dramatic will happen to publishers, and they may think they have the situation under control. But then we'll reach a tipping point, and suddenly established authors will have a financial incentive to go direct rather than bothering with paper publication of their books. Once that happens, the all book buyers will have a very strong incentive to get e-readers - some books by bestselling authors simply won't be available in paper form, or will be available first electronically. This will drive more rapid sales of e-readers, which will give authors even more incentive to bypass the publishers.

Once the dam cracks, the water will move very quickly.

Some notes on this scenario:

-I simplified the pricing story by assuming that ebooks are priced the same as hardcovers. They aren't, so the tipping point is probably a bit higher than 20%.

-On the other hand, Macmillan's move to raise the price of ebooks actually brings the tipping point closer. Every time ebook prices go up, that creates more incentive for an author to go electronic.

-The authors most likely to switch to electronic publication are the established names who don't need a publisher's help in marketing. Those authors are also often the most profitable for a publisher. That means the impact of the switch may be even greater than what I laid out here.

-Products like the iPad bring the tipping point closer, because they are tablets that do other things than just reading books. This bypasses the chicken and egg situation that killed e-readers in 2000. Every time Apple convinces someone to buy an iPad to do browsing or watch videos, that's another potential book-buyer who's ready for ebooks.

-The competition between Apple and Amazon will also probably bring the tipping point closer, because it holds down the cut charged by the online ebook stores. In January, anticipating the iPad announcement, Amazon cut its charge on self-published ebooks to 30%, matching Apple's terms on the iPhone app store ( link).

Six critical questions for book publishers

Are publishers doomed? Not necessarily. I think we're going to end up with a range of situations in which some authors sell direct on their own, some use selected services to help them self-publish, and some partner with publishers for services similar to the things they do today. But the publishers will be dealing with new competitors and new economics, and they'll need to rethink who their customers are, and what unique value they can add from the perspective of those people. The time to do that thinking is now, before e-readers reach the tipping point. Here are the questions to ask:

1. Who is my customer, the author or the book-buyer? Most publishers today would say "both," and might add the bookstore to that list as well. But that reflects the print publishing channel structure. In the electronic world, those audiences do not have to be bundled together. There may be some publishers who partner primarily with authors, and are more or less invisible to readers. There may be other publishers that play a very prominent role in the eyes of readers (examples below). The point is to understand which type of publisher you are, and adjust your business accordingly.

2. How much value do my editing services add from the reader's point of view? I've seen quotes from publishers saying that ebook consumers will want to pay more for ebooks that are properly edited. If you believe this, I invite you to re-read the discussion of CDs vs. MP3s above. If a book is poorly edited, people will just blame the author. That means editing is actually a service for authors, not readers. Which brings us to the next question...

3. How much value do my editing services add from the author's point of view? Many authors acknowledge that their editors add tremendous value to their books; others hate their editors. But the key question is, could they hire a freelancer to do the same thing? Question for a publisher: What if some of the people you just laid off form an editing cooperative and then contact your authors with a cut-rate offer?

4. How much demand generation do we really do? This is a place where the perspectives of authors and publishers often differ. Publishers tell me that they do a lot to create demand for books. Authors typically say the publishers just shovel books onto the market and wait to see which ones sell themselves. If the publisher doesn't generate demand, then an author might as well self-publish electronically as soon as it pays more money.

5. Which brand are the readers buying? This varies tremendously from publisher to publisher. In fiction, the author's name is generally the brand that readers respond to. No reader cares who published Steven King's latest book; they just buy Steven King. But in other fields, especially nonfiction, it's more common for a publisher to control the brand. Think of the For Dummies franchise, or Sunset's How-to books, or the role that O'Reilly plays in technical books. I think e-publishing may make those brands even more powerful. A traditional publisher can help a paper book sell well by working behind the scenes to get bookstores to promote it - put it on the table out front, place it on an endcap, and so on. Most of that promotional opportunity doesn't exist in an online store. Instead, your product is just tossed out there in a sea of other products, and it has to succeed or fail on its own. In that world, a recognized brand naturally floats to the top. That's why the Madden football game on iPhone costs $7 while many other iPhone games sell for 99 cents.

6. What sort of book am I selling? Writer/publisher Craig Mod wrote a splendid essay discussing the difference between books that have form and books that do not have form ( link). Books that have form get some value from the physical book itself - maybe it's the arrangement of text and images that creates a certain impression, or maybe it's the need for something physical (think of a coffee table book or a gift book). Those books are not going to be cannibalized easily by electronic publishing.

On the other hand, formless books (those that don't get any special value from the physical form of the book) are ripe for the picking. Think paperbacks and general-consumption fiction and nonfiction.

When we're confronted by all the downsides of change, it's important to remember that change also brings progress. If publishing gets a lot more efficient, we should see greater diversity of new sorts of publications, as well as the rebirth of a lot of old books and stories that we can't get to today. That's a future to look forward to - as long as you can figure out how to keep your job during the transition.
Michael Mace is a principal at Rubicon Consulting, and a former executive at Palm, Apple, and Silicon Graphics. This post was originally posted on his blog, and his reproduced with permission.

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Why E-Books Failed In 2000, And What It Means For 2010

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Michael Mace is a principal at Rubicon Consulting, and a former executive at Palm, Apple, and Silicon Graphics. This post was originally posted on his blog, and his reproduced with permission. It's a great time for ebooks. There are at least six ebook reader devices on the market or in preparation.

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Snake. Polyphonic ringtones. Infrared. To a certain crop of millennials, those words will mean very little - but to those of us who grew up in the '00s with Nokia 3310s and Motorola flip phones, they were just small elements of mobile phone culture that seemingly dominated our lives at the time.

At the time it felt like we'd reached the pinnacle of mobile technology, and though the 3310 is making a comeback, many of the phones are sadly obsolete now. Luckily though, they've been immortalised in these throwback lyrics and they'll make you want to chuck out your smart phone and dig out your trusty old brick.

"There's only music so that there's new ringtones" - Arctic Monkeys, 'A Certain Romance'

What's changed: Polyphonic ringtones are gone and we're all stuck with dull default ones.

"Should be a good night in here, rammo in the main room, people keep pushing me though, no reception on the phone" - The Streets, 'Blinded By The Lights'

What's changed: Nothing really. Trying to meet your pals at a gig in a venue with no bars - not going to happen.

"So leave a message and I'll call you back" - No Doubt, 'Spiderwebs'

What's changed: Who even checks their voicemail anymore, let alone calls anyone back off of it? Not even Gwen Stefani, probably.

"If you want me you can watch me on your video phone" - Beyonce, 'Video Phone'

What's changed: Videophones like The Lobster were made virtually obsolete by smartphones. They tried, though.

"LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, LOL smiley face" - Trey Songz, 'LOL Smiley Face'

What changed: Emojis happened, basically.

"If you want me just text me / 'Cause I'm having a chemical reaction" - Sugababes, 'Virgin Sexy'

What changed: Facebook, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Twitter. Only your nan texts people these days.

"And she won't be surprised and she won't be shocked / When she's pressed the star after she's pressed unlock" - Arctic Monkeys, 'View From The Afternoon'

What's changed: The four digit pass code is still knocking about for those without fingerprint recognition, but your phone is smart enough that you don't need to mash the star key any more. Progress.

What changed: Though you may have spent most of your school lunchtimes bluetoothing funny videos to your pals, messenger services like Whatsapp rendered the clunky connection useless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0nRibTRIEM

What's changed: Nokias are pretty scarce now, as are PAYG contracts and the dread of running out of phone credit. God bless lengthy, expensive contracts, eh?

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Nine painfully '00s lyrics about brick phones that'll get your thumbs twitching

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Snake. Polyphonic ringtones. Infrared. To a certain crop of millennials, those words will mean very little - but to those of us who grew up in the '00s with Nokia 3310s and Motorola flip phones, they were just small elements of mobile phone culture that seemingly dominated our lives at the time.

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5 ways the iPhone changed our lives | CNN Business

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Five years later, the phone's dramatic impact can be seen in our daily lives, schools, factories and boardrooms.

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This story is part of a group of stories called

Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing - and changing us.

Apple's first iPhone was released 10 years ago this week - on June 29, 2007. While it wasn't the first smartphone, it leapfrogged far beyond the competition and launched the mobile revolution. Few industries or societies have been left unchanged.

Here are 10 charts that show some of the profound effects the iPhone-led - and Google Android-fueled - mobile boom have caused over the past decade.

1. The iPhone put the internet in everyone's pocket

When Steve Jobs first unveiled the iPhone, he described it as a "a revolutionary mobile phone," a "widescreen iPod with touch controls" and a "breakthrough Internet communications device."

While it's called the iPhone, it's that last part - the internet device - that has had the biggest effect on the world. That's most obvious in this Ericsson chart showing the usage of mobile voice - relatively steady growth - and exploding mobile internet traffic - boosted by iOS and Android apps, photos and especially video - over the years.

2. The iPhone transformed photography from a hobby to a part of everyday life

Smartphones, along with their attendant photo-editing apps, put good cameras in everybody's pockets and we all became prolific photographers. The simultaneous rise of social media platforms, in turn, gave us a place and a reason to post our photos.

This year, 1.2 trillion digital photos will be taken worldwide, and most of those - 85 percent - will be taken on phones, according to market research firm KeyPoint Intelligence (formerly known as InfoTrends). That's up from the 400 billion digital photos taken in 2011.

3. The iPhone App Store changed the way software was created and distributed

Apple launched its App Store in 2008 - a year after the iPhone's launch - with 500 apps. Now there are 2.1 million on the App Store and 3.4 million on its Android competitor Google Play, according to app measurement company App Annie.

Apps have turned phones into everything from a bank to a motion-sensitive video game device. Indeed, a warehouse of nostalgia could be stuffed with the everyday items that smartphones replaced: Maps, flashlights, clocks, scanners, video cameras, calendars, calculators, computers, iPods and more.

In the first quarter of 2017, the combined publisher revenue for downloads and in-app purchases in the App Store and Google Play grew to $10.5 billion - not including revenue from in-app advertising or commerce, such as Amazon purchases or Uber rides.

4. iPhone apps changed everything, even how people work

On-demand work began with the first internet boom in the late 1990s. But their numbers didn't become substantial until the advent of smartphones with GPS chips and on-demand marketplace apps like Uber, according to Steve King, a partner at Emergent Research, which collects on-demand workforce data along with tax-prep company Intuit.

Currently there are about four million on-demand workers in the U.S., a number that is expected to double in the next four years.

5. iPhones have changed little things, too, like gum sales

Supermarket checkout lines - strategically stocked with magazines and candy - were for a long time a major point of sale for gum. Consumers waiting on line to pay would look around and make impulse buys. Now, however, we're so consumed with our phones that we're not reaching for a pack of gum to stave off our boredom. Indeed, gum sales have declined 15 percent since 2007, the year the iPhone came out, according to market research firm Euromonitor International.

6. iPhones became our fastest-growing obsession - not always for the better

People spent more time consuming media last year than ever before thanks to smartphones. Socializing, which used to be a non-media activity, now occurs on social media and over mobile connections. Time spent on the mobile web has also cut into other media activities, such as reading physical papers and watching TV.

7. Shifting attention transformed the advertising industry - making Google and Facebook the big winners

Advertising dollars go to where the eyeballs are. Not only is the internet supplanting traditional advertising platforms like TV for the most ad spending worldwide, but internet advertising itself is in transition. Mobile advertising spending is expected to surpass desktop this year.

8. The iPhone transformed Apple's business - and drove massive growth

In its 2006 fiscal year, Apple generated $1.9 billion of profit on $19.3 billion of revenue - mostly from the iPod and Mac. Its business grew 10 times over the next decade. Last year, it generated $45.6 billion of profit on $215.6 billion of revenue. The iPhone drove 63 percent of its sales last year - and likely even more of its profit.

9. The iPhone made Apple the world's most valuable company

In the years before the iPhone's launch, Apple was still struggling. The iPod was a big growth driver, but it was nothing like what the iPhone would do starting in around 2008. These days, Apple is worth more than twice as much as Exxon Mobil and three times as much as General Electric, traditional blue chip stocks.

10. The iPhone also led to the Android ecosystem, boosting companies like Samsung - and ruining BlackBerry and Nokia

These days, iPhones have a lot of cheaper competition and sales have shrunk. In 2018, Apple is expected to sell 241 million phones, compared with Samsung's 404 million, according to data from research firm Canaccord Genuity. Remember that iPhones are more expensive than most smartphones, so while Apple's unit sales aren't the biggest, its revenue per phone is.

Perhaps more interesting: The many things the iPhone has changed that are a degree or two away, and perhaps difficult to isolate or measure.

Have drug dealing and other illegal activities become more efficient thanks to the smartphone's discreet payment model? Has English become more prominent as English-language-based mobile apps connect the developing world? Have smartphones and the omnipresent connectedness they provide enabled the rise of helicopter parents, niche communities or better literacy?

We'd love to follow up with more trends like this - especially if you have the data or know where to find it. Reach me at rani@recode.net.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net. Will you help keep Vox free for all?
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How Apple's iPhone changed the world: 10 years in 10 charts

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Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing - and changing us. Apple's first iPhone was released 10 years ago this week - on June 29, 2007. While it wasn't the first smartphone, it leapfrogged far beyond the competition and launched the mobile revolution. Few industries or societies have been left unchanged.

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How Media Consumption Has Changed Since 2000

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Consumption of news, information and entertainment has radically changed, and not just online. In this talk, Director Lee Rainie presents the latest data and trends.

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Traci Ruether

We used to live in a world where watching a video on the internet meant waiting 28 hours for the file to download. I'm referring to the turn of the century, back when dial-up internet was cutting-edge and the term smartphone hadn't made its way into common lexicon.

What else was happening, you ask? Well, risk-takers like myself were illegally downloading music to the family desktop via the peer-to-peer sharing site Kazaa. And Netflix was disrupting the movie rental industry by mailing DVDs to subscribers (how avant garde!)

It goes without saying that streaming video was in its infancy - but the stage was set for what would come. In fact, many of the budding technologies at the time still play a role in video delivery.

Flash forward to today. The idea of having to wait for a video to download rather than watching it on demand is akin to commuting to work in a horse-drawn carriage. Besides, who's still going into an office these days, anyways?

Live and video on demand (VOD) streaming is now ingrained into everyday life. We conduct business meetings over Zoom, scream at porch pirates through our doorbell cams, and sweat to fitness routines on connected gym equipment. Robotic vacuums, smartwatches, and medical devices all have real-time streaming capabilities built in. Binging shows on Netflix is now a common leisure activity, whereas Facetiming is a verb in the Oxford Languages dictionary.

Just imagine the COVID-19 pandemic without streaming. That wedding you attended from your living room couch? It wouldn't have ever taken place. And the opportunity to escape the pandemic doldrums by binging The Queen's Gambit? Forget about it.

These days, online video isn't just popular, it's a part of how we live. So how did we get here? Let's take a trip through the history of streaming.

1990-2000: Streaming Debuts as a Proof of Concept

It all starts in the good old nineties. Beanie babies were all the rage, the Macarena was about to go viral, and Gwen Stefani was still punk rock.

Meanwhile, another decidedly less-punk-rock band was making waves in the tech world. I'm talking about Severe Tire Damage, the first live internet band. Just as many famous startups trace their origin to a Silicon Valley garage, so too does Severe Tire Damage. And because the band members had some hook-ups in the tech community, they were the subjects of the first live stream to ever include both audio and video. This was achieved using a technology called MBone. According to one of the band members, the broadcast used up about half of the total available bandwidth for the internet at that time.

The very next year, the Rolling Stones joined Severe tire Damage as live streaming pioneers. And shortly after that, ESPN took advantage of live audio streaming for the Seattle Mariners vs. New York Yankees game.

Some key technologies entered the picture during this decade as well. Forget about MBone, we're talking the Macromedia (later Adobe) Flash Player, and two streaming protocols that remain relevant today: the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and the Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP).

2001-2010: The Era of Flash and RTMP

As bandwidth grew and compression technologies advanced, Adobe Flash became synonymous with video streaming. Meanwhile, RTMP worked behind the scenes as the quarterback.

The concept of internet video also began to play a role in mass media - with streaming services like YouTube, Justin.tv (which would become Twitch), and Netflix taking off. Broadband penetration was increasing and mobile cellular technologies were advancing. Adobe Flash was living its best life, powering 98% of internet browsers.

And then Steve Jobs decided to shake things up.

In his now infamous memo, Thoughts on Flash, the CEO of Apple criticized Flash for being proprietary. He then hammered the nail in the coffin by announcing that the iPhone would not support Flash. Instead, Apple would stream video using its own proprietary format: HTTP Live Streaming (HLS).

2011-2019: Live Broadcasting Is Brought to the Masses

Truth be told, Steve Jobs had a point. Moving away from Flash had plenty of benefits. Specifically, HTTP-based technologies outperform the RTMP protocol in terms of both scale and quality. That's because they allow content distributors to distribute chunk-based adaptive bitrate media files across web servers rather than requiring dedicated streaming servers.

The move to adaptive streaming helped combat buffering and improve caching efficiency in one fell swoop. But, in dethroning RTMP, we were left with a new set of proprietary technologies looking to seize the throne (including Apple HLS, Microsoft Smooth, and Adobe HDS). For that reason, MPEG-DASH was developed in 2012 as an alternative to vendor-specific technologies.

And so, when YouTube moved from Flash to HTML5, it chose DASH as its default protocol. But this introduced a new problem: latency.

Live streaming flourished during the 2010s, as well as video consumption on mobile devices. But so did latency. For instance, when eight million people watched Felix Baumgartner break the sound barrier on YouTube Live, the broadcast actually came with a 20-second delay.

Early 2020s: COVID-19 Ushers in a Streaming Boom and Flash Dies

During the first years of the 2020s, live video streaming became ubiquitous. Pandemic-mandated social distancing meant that collaboration and entertainment took place online. 2020 was also the year that Flash officially died, so broadcasters looked to streaming protocols like Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC), Low-Latency HLS, CMAF for DASH, and Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) to address latency concerns and power interactive content.

Some highlights of the early 2020s included the first entirely virtual NFL draft, Nasa and SpaceX's launch to the International Space Station, and more than 3.3 trillion Zoom meetings. Use cases like telehealth, digital fitness, and live commerce became second nature to consumers around the world.

Even as the pandemic continues to loosen its grip, its impact on society lives on. There's no way around it: Video technology now powers everything, for everyone, everywhere.

2021-Onward: Streaming Is Here to Stay

Video streaming is here to stay. Find out what lies ahead by downloading our free report - or subscribe to our blog to stay updated.

Sources for Infographic:

About Traci Ruether

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History of Streaming Media [Infographic]

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Traci Ruether We used to live in a world where watching a video on the internet meant waiting 28 hours for the file to download. I'm referring to the turn of the century, back when dial-up internet was cutting-edge and the term smartphone hadn't made its way into common lexicon.

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There was a moment in the mid-2000s when it seemed like we might be collecting songs, one-by-one, into eternity. Internet connections were getting faster, hard drives stored more data in tinier spaces, songs were easier than ever to find and available for little or no money. Every year, the new version of Apple's iPod, first introduced in 2001 with a now-adorable 5GB of storage space, held thousands upon thousands more songs. It was easy to imagine this trend approaching a music lover's fantasy: a day in the future when we'd be able to carry songs in our pockets, at full fidelity, by the millions.

Today, the original iPod, which was discontinued after just 13 years, looks as quaint as Sony's Walkman cassette player, which survived more than 30. Last year, according to a report by Nielsen SoundScan, sales of digital songs dropped by more than 12 percent. Digital album sales were down almost 10 percent. They will not rebound in 2015.

Instead, more music fans are turning to free, ad-supported and paid-subscription services that offer instant access to libraries that would make the wildest dreams of the iPod user seem tame. The era of streaming music is upon us, and if you need writing on the wall, turn to the relentless coverage of Apple's acquisition of Beats Music, a subscription service that is scheduled to be rolled into the iTunes platform sometime this year, possibly as soon as next week.

The timing can't be an accident. Apple stands to gain plenty by luring its hundreds of millions of users to a subscription-based streaming service, but it stands to lose, as well: The transition will surely speed the decline of the single-song download, and iTunes, the world's largest music store, will feel that pain acutely. Apple's entry into the market isn't the signal that the world is ready for streaming music; it's proof that the transition has already begun.

So over the next week, rather than waiting to see when iTunes will launch its attack on established services like Spotify, we're going to examine the world of streaming music that is upon us in a series called Streaming At The Tipping Point.

As these services have taken hold - Nielsen says that in 2014, on-demand streaming rose 54 percent - the news media has primarily covered them in two ways: as generators (but not always fair distributors) of cash and as technological novelties.

The question of money - of royalties - is a crucial one to the survival of the recording industry. But streaming music has unlocked other new questions for the musician and fan alike: of ownership, of taste and of morality. Do we listen differently when we have unlimited options? Does the rise of the streaming service eliminate the very need for a library of one's own, or does it just change how we acquire and interact with that library? Do your musical preferences belong to you? What role do listeners play in ensuring the life of music and the livelihood of musicians?

For a large part of the recording industry, the move to embrace streaming actually solves a long-time paradox: one of ownership. Over digital music's 30-year evolution, from the public introduction of the compact disc in 1981 to the international expansion of Spotify in the last half-decade, the question of whether listeners owned the music they purchased got murkier.

In an earlier era, there was no such question - buying a vinyl record meant you could listen to the music until you wore it out, filed it away forever or grew a new set of ears and snapped the old disc in half.

Call the CD - and the digital files it so precariously contained, the sources of the fundamental rift between listeners and labels - the digital infection. Once you could strip a song from its physical home and make a copy (or many copies), that control seemed to imply ownership. The recording industry's fight against that principle took on the form of invasive digital rights management software, advertising campaigns, threats and lawsuits. You weren't buying the music itself when you purchased an album or a song, it said, just the right to listen to it. But the MP3, the digital format gone airborne, turned this germ into a pandemic. The industry could argue all it wanted that listeners didn't have the right to make copies and share them with strangers, but every new piece of technology made the counter-argument.

Streaming, at least the label-sanctioned version, puts the genie back in the bottle. Every time you click play on a streaming service, from Pandora to YouTube to Spotify, you're licensing the right to listen to the song in that particular moment, whether you pay a subscription or sit through an ad. Ownership is never even an option. You listen, you license. If you want to listen again, you license again. In this way, streaming music suggests the passing of two eras: the digital download, but also the concept that fans might possess music itself.

No format lives forever. The LP, the cassette, the CD, the MP3 - each one dominated the market for about 15 years before ceding to the next technological advance. Will this latest revision define a new relationship between fans and cloud-bound digital files? The truth is, listeners bend each format to the utility they desire, and adapt to its particular attributes. The question we'll ask over the next week is this: How will streaming change us?

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Over the next week, in a series called Streaming At The Tipping Point, we'll look at how streaming music services are reshaping the way we find, hear and experience music.

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’00s vs ’20s - how has music consumption and tech changed?

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How has the music world changed since the ’00s? NME investigates…

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Sort by Popularity - Most Popular Movies and TV Shows tagged with keyword "george-w.-bush-character" - IMDb

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IMDb's advanced search allows you to run extremely powerful queries over all people and titles in the database. Find exactly what you're looking for!

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Category:Songs about George W. Bush - Wikipedia

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In 1994 Bush challenged Democratic incumbent Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas. A major issue in the campaign concerned Bush's sale of all his Harken stock in June 1990, just days before the company completed a second quarter with heavy losses. An investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1991 into the possibility of illegal insider trading (trading that takes advantage of information not available to the public) did not uncover any wrongdoing. Bush won the election with 53 percent of the vote (compared with 46 percent for Richards), thus becoming the first child of a U.S. president to be elected a state governor.

As governor, Bush increased state spending on elementary and secondary education and made the salaries and promotions of teachers and administrators contingent on their students' performance on standardized tests. His administration increased the number of crimes for which juveniles could be sentenced to adult prisons following custody in juvenile detention and lowered to 14 the age at which children could be tried as adults. Throughout his tenure Bush received international attention for the brisk use of capital punishment in Texas relative to other states. Bush signed into law several measures aimed at tort reform, including one that imposed new limits on punitive damages and another that narrowed the legal definition of "gross negligence." Reelected in 1998 with nearly 70 percent of the vote, Bush became the first Texas governor to win consecutive four-year terms (in 1972 voters had approved a referendum that extended the governor's term from two years to four).

Bush formally announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in June 1999. He described his political philosophy as "compassionate conservatism," a view that combined traditional Republican economic policies with concern for the underprivileged. Despite Bush's refusal to give direct answers to questions about his drinking and possible use of illegal drugs (he implied that he had not used illegal drugs since 1974), he won the Republican nomination, taking a strong lead in public opinion polls over Vice Pres. Al Gore, the Democratic Party nominee; Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate; and political journalist Patrick Buchanan, the nominee of the Reform Party. His running mate was Dick Cheney, former chief of staff for Pres. Gerald Ford and secretary of defense during the presidency of Bush's father.

As the general election campaign continued, the gap in the polls between Bush and Gore narrowed to the closest in any election in the previous 40 years. On election day the presidency hinged on the 25 electoral votes of Florida, where Bush led Gore by fewer than 1,000 popular votes after a mandatory statewide machine recount. After the Gore campaign asked for manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties, the Bush campaign filed suit in federal court to stop them. For five weeks the election remained unresolved as Florida state courts and federal courts heard numerous legal challenges by both campaigns. Eventually the Florida Supreme Court decided (4-3) to order a statewide manual recount of the approximately 45,000 "undervotes"-ballots that machines recorded as not clearly expressing a presidential vote. The Bush campaign quickly filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to delay the recounts until it could hear the case; a stay was issued by the court on December 9. Three days later, concluding (7-2) that a fair statewide recount could not be performed in time to meet the December 18 deadline for certifying the state's electors, the court issued a controversial 5-4 decision to reverse the Florida Supreme Court's recount order, effectively awarding the presidency to Bush. By winning Florida, Bush narrowly won the electoral vote over Gore by 271 to 266-only 1 more than the required 270 (one Gore elector abstained).

With his inauguration, Bush became only the second son of a president to assume the nation's highest office; the other was John Quincy Adams (1825-29), the son of John Adams (1797-1801).

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George W. Bush - Governor of Texas, US President, Republican

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George W. Bush - Governor of Texas, US President, Republican: In 1994 Bush challenged Democratic incumbent Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas. A major issue in the campaign concerned Bush's sale of all his Harken stock in June 1990, just days before the company completed a second quarter with heavy losses.

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Overview: Bush and Public Opinion

As George W. Bush prepares to leave the White House, the United States is in many ways dramatically different from when he took the oath of office in 2001. His first few months as president were largely unremarkable, despite the contentious 2000 election. But the horrific terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 greatly altered the course forward.

The attacks transformed American public opinion and fundamentally reshaped Bush's image. His job approval rating reached 86% by late September. The public expressed broad willingness to use military force to combat terrorism. But then controversies over the build-up to war in Iraq and other Bush policies started to take their toll - at home and abroad.

U.S. forces quickly ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003, but could not create a lasting peace. As the fighting dragged on, Bush won re-election by a narrow margin. In his second term, he failed in his bid to build support for a partial privatization of Social Security. American deaths continued in Iraq, the government bungled the response to the devastating Hurricane Katrina in late 2005 and political scandal reached directly into the White House.

Soon, economic troubles started to mount, and in 2008, the economy went into a dangerous free fall that led to controversial and expensive government intervention in financial markets. The president's approval ratings slid over time to historic lows. His approval last hit 50% as he started his second term. It stood at just 24% in early December.

Not surprisingly, the public's verdict on the Bush presidency is overwhelmingly negative. In a December 2008 Pew Research Center survey, just 11% said Bush will be remembered as an outstanding or above average president - by far the lowest positive end-of-term rating for any of the past four presidents. Yet Bush's impact on public opinion over the past eight years is seen in ways that go well beyond his personal unpopularity.

He helped shape the post-9/11 climate of opinion that was broadly accepting of a muscular approach to U.S. national security. And even after much of the public came to oppose the war in Iraq, there continued to be considerable support for the Bush doctrine of preemptive military action. In spite of the public's shock over pictures of abuse of detainees at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison, nearly half of Americans consistently said that the torture of terrorists to gain key information was at least sometimes justified.

In the final year of his presidency, even as his approval rating steadily declined to historic lows, most Americans continued to say Bush's anti-terror policies deserve at least a fair amount of credit for preventing more terror attacks.

In his first term, Bush scored several early legislative successes on domestic issues - such as the No Child Left Behind education reform, two rounds of tax cuts and the launch of a significant Medicare drug plan.

But after those successes, the instances when Bush was able to mobilize - and maintain - public support for his agenda were rare. Even in the realm of national security, the public increasingly rejected the idea that a large military presence overseas would reduce the threat of terror at home.

Public backing for what was to have been Bush's signature second-term achievement - reforming the Social

Security system - withered within months of his reelection. His immigration reform proposal faced opposition within his own party, even though it was an issue - like Social Security - where Americans recognized major change was needed.

What might have damaged Bush's legacy most was his administration's mixed record of competent governance. Between Iraq, the government's flawed relief effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and more minor missteps over the Dubai ports issue and other matters, the government "brand" deteriorated badly during the Bush years. In late April 2008, just 37% expressed a favorable view of the federal government, about half of the percentage of five years earlier (73%).

Final Judgments

In a Pew survey conducted Dec. 3-7 among 1,489 adults, the American public paints a harshly negative picture of Bush's tenure. Nearly two-thirds (64%) say his administration will be

remembered more for its failures than its accomplishments, and a plurality (34%) says Bush will go down in history as a poor president. Fully 68% say they disapprove of Bush's performance and most of those - 53% of the public - say they disapprove strongly. That is the highest rate of strong disapproval measured by Pew surveys in Bush's eight years in office.

As his second term ends, only 13% say Bush has made progress toward solving the major issues facing the country; 37% say he has made those problems worse and 34% say he has tried but failed in his efforts. Another 11% say he has not addressed the major problems facing the country.

More than three times as many people say Bush will go down in history as a poor president (34%) than said the same of Bill Clinton at the end of his presidency (11%). About a quarter (24%) say Bush will be seen as below average and close to three-in-ten (28%) say he will be seen as average. Just 11% say he will go down in history as above average or outstanding.

Not surprisingly, the most critical assessments come from Democrats. More than half (53%) say Bush will go down in history as a poor president, while 25% say he will be remembered as below average. More than four-in-ten Republicans (44%) say he will be remembered as an average president; 21% say below average and 6% say poor. Two-in-ten say he will be remembered as above average, while 7% say outstanding.

Americans by a wide margin (64% to 24%) also say that in the long run the failures of the Bush administration will outweigh its accomplishments. The assessment of Clinton in 2001, despite controversy over how he had conducted himself in office, was virtually a mirror image. Six-in-ten said the accomplishments would outweigh the failures, and 27% said the failures would outweigh the accomplishments.

Just over half (52%) of Republicans say the Bush administration will be best known for its accomplishments. That number is significantly smaller for independents (20%) and Democrats (8%). When Clinton was leaving office, his own party (77%) and independents (60%) were much more convinced he would be remembered for his accomplishments.

Second Term Approval Slide

Between the start of his second term and December 2008, Bush's approval rating dropped from 50% to 24%, a level that rivals the historic lows recorded by Gallup for Harry S Truman as he left office in 1952. Declines came across demographic and political groups, though significant divides still exist among those with differing political ideologies.

Approval among moderate and liberal Republicans saw one of the sharpest drops - from 82% to 50%. Conservative Republican approval dropped from 94% to 66%. Independent approval started at below half in 2005 - 47% - but dropped to 18% by December 2008. The change among Democratic groups, already highly critical of Bush, proved less dramatic. Approval among conservative and moderate Democrats dropped from 22% t o 8%, while approval among liberal Democrats dropped from 7% to 2%.

Bush's approval dropped significantly among all education levels. In terms of age groups, the largest decline came among the youngest voters - those age 18-29. Within that group, approval dropped from 50% to 19%. The oldest group - age 65 and up - experienced a smaller decline, dropping from 47% to 26%.

A Legacy of War

When people are asked what they think Bush will be most remembered for after he leaves office, the most frequent responses volunteered are tied to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism. More than half (51%) of responses mention facets of the Global War on Terror, with close to three-in-ten (29%) specifically mentioning Iraq.

About 17% include specific negative assessments of Bush and his performance. Small percentages within that group refer to his competence (2%), his negative impact on the country (2%) or label him the "worst president" (2%). Another 13% refer to the impact of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, with 9% mentioning the attacks specifically and 3% noting that Bush had kept the country safe from major attack since that day. Another 12% mentions economic issues, including 7% who refer to the economy specifically, 4% who mention the current crisis and 3% referring to the recession. Another 4% offer positive assessments of Bush's performance in office.

Meanwhile, concerns about Bush's effectiveness are also seen in the one-word answers people give to describe their impressions of the president. In mid-2005, positive one-word descriptions outnumbered negative ones, but in more recent lists, the responses have been more negative. The most frequently mentioned description in the latest survey was "incompetent," just as it was in February 2007 and March 2006. Many of the terms offered by respondents in the December 2008 survey are negative, though the second most frequently mentioned description was honest. Good and honorable also make the list.

The Global Outlook

On the foreign stage, a solid majority of Americans say the country is significantly less respected than in the past - and many of those people see that as a major problem. Many Americans are eager to turn inward to deal with this nation's problems: fully 60% said in September 2008 that domestic policy should be the primary focus of the new president. And a greater percentage than before the Iraq war now say the best way to reduce the threat of terror is to reduce America's military presence overseas, not increase it.

Meanwhile, a 2008 survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project showed that majorities in 19 of the 24 nations - including several strong U.S. allies - had little confidence in Bush as he neared the end of his presidency. A 2007 survey of 45 nations found anti-American sentiment extensive as well as increasing disapproval for key elements of U.S. foreign policy.

And the image of the U.S. in the Muslim world remained abysmal. Iraq, the war on terrorism and American support for Israel continued to generate animosity in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere. In many nations considered central to the war on terror, the general public deeply distrusted the United States. Even in countries like Kuwait that have long been considered relatively pro-American, the U.S. image had declined.

Among the few bright spots for Bush in the Global Attitudes surveys were the African nations that had benefited from administration programs to boost economic growth and reduce the spread of AIDS. In 2008, majorities in Tanzania and Nigeria expressed confidence in the president.

Still, Bush has had some success at home building support for tough tactics - including harsh interrogation policies for foreign detainees and government monitoring of phone calls or e-mails without warrants - to gather information about possible terrorists and stop potential attacks. On balance, more Americans say they worry that anti-terror policies have not gone far enough in protecting the United States than say they feel the anti-terror policies have "gone too far in restricting civil liberties."

The Political Legacy

When Bush took office, Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House. But voter party preferences shifted significantly during Bush's second term as missteps, bad news and scandals took their toll on Bush and GOP congressional leaders. In the 2006 midterm elections, more independents and moderates aligned themselves with the party out of power and Democrats took control of the House and the Senate.

In 2008, Bush was barely seen during the presidential campaign. Both Barack Obama and John McCain persistently criticized his administration, vowing to bring "change" to Washington. Obama's significant win and additional Democratic gains in Congress signaled a continuing decline of the Republican Party under Bush.

In surveys conducted in the fall of 2008, 51% of all voters said they thought of themselves as Democrats or leaned toward the Democratic Party. That was up five points from 46% during the same period in 2004. Meanwhile, the number identifying with or leaning toward the Republican Party fell from 45% to 41%.

The greatest gains came among younger voters. Only among voters age 65 and older did the percentage identifying with the Democratic Party decrease - from 49% in 2004 to 47% in 2008. The percentage of voters age 18 to 29 identifying with the Democratic Party increased from 48% in the fall of 2004 to 61% in the fall of 2008. Democrats now outnumber Republicans by a margin of nearly two-to-one (61% to 32%) in this age group, up from only a seven-point advantage in 2004.

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Overview: Bush and Public Opinion As George W. Bush prepares to leave the White House, the United States is in many ways dramatically different from when

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Forty-Third President, 2001-2009
In 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote during his election. Florida votes had to be recounted, and after weeks of legal battles, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no fair way to recount the votes in Florida in time for the state's votes to be counted in the Electoral College. Bush ultimately won the presidency by just a few hundred votes. Although Bush won an Electoral College victory by a margin of 271 to 266, his opponent Al Gore won 500,000 more popular votes.

President Bush's second term campaign was focused on reforming immigration, social security, and, of course, fighting the war on terror.
Challenges:
The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 marked the beginning of what George W. Bush proclaimed the "War on Terror," initiating the war with Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein.

Hurricane Katrina devastated areas of New Orleans and the Mississippi delta, overwhelming sources of aid relief from the affected states. Bush did not act quickly or send enough federal assistance to the area, resulting in unnecessary violence, suffering, and death.

Bush could not placate Democrats in Congress, and the initiatives he took to reform Social Security failed.

President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act instituting a national curriculum and testing standards.

Bush passed the Patriot Act, which granted controversial and unprecedented freedom to government and law enforcement to protect citizens from terrorism.

The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 created new benefits and was the largest expansion of Medicare benefits since the program's creation in 1965.

Bush helped stem an AIDS/HIV epidemic in Africa. By the time Bush left office in January 2009, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief had paid for the treatment of 2.1 million people and testing and counseling for more than 57 million.

Bush created the President's Malaria Initiative, a $1.2 billion program to fight the disease in fifteen African countries with a goal of cutting malaria deaths in half.

Attempting to boost global economy, the Bush administration expanded the number of U.S. free trade agreements from three to seventeen and invested $6.7 billion in 35 partner countries.

In the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Bush Doctrine stated that extremist violence against Americans would be avoided through preventive war in which the United States would strike an enemy nation or terrorist group before they had a chance to attack the U.S.; mandated unilateral action in which America would act alone if necessary to defend itself either at home or abroad; and promoted spreading democracy and freedom around the world, focusing on concepts such as free markets, free trade, and individual liberty.

The slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina greatly affected George W. Bush's popularity, which dropped accordingly.

Effects from the 2008 financial crisis at the end of Bush's tenure were so long-lasting that it would take years for the U.S. economy to recover.

The fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa will likely remain as one of President Bush's most important legacies.

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Knowing the Presidents: George W. Bush | Smithsonian Institution

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George W. BushForty-Third President, 2001-2009Campaign:In 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote during his election.... Learn more

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The legacy of George W. Bush remains, much like his 2000 election, a subject of profound controversy, and any truly objective evaluation will likely be years in the future. He entered office as one of only a handful Presidents to lose the nation's popular vote. The election of 2000 and the Supreme Court case of Bush v. Gore remain two of the most controversial political developments in the last half-century. Some thought that President Bush should begin his term by trying to find common ground and avoid controversy to take some of the edge off the nation's polarized politics coming out of the 2000 election. Instead, as one of his first actions, President Bush issued an executive order creating the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which further alienated some who thought government money should not go to organizations affiliated with churches. Yet he did reach across the aisle on other issues including the No Child Left Behind Act, which was the most impactful change in education policy in a generation.

Within nine months of taking office, President Bush was afforded the chance to unite the nation after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. By most accounts, Bush did a masterful job of speaking for and to the American people. His crisis leadership, including insisting on returning to the White House the night of the attacks instead of holing up in a safe bunker elsewhere, gave the American people confidence that someone was in charge. He became the most popular President in the history of polling, reaching an astounding 90 percent approval rating in the wake of the attacks.

Following an authorization from Congress to eliminate those who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11, Bush ordered an invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership was driven into the mountains and across the boarders into neighboring countries, including Pakistan. Those early successes, however, turned into the longest war in American history, and the President never was able to achieve the greatest symbolic goal of the effort, the killing or capturing of the mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden; U.S. special forces achieved that goal in 2011 under Bush's successor, President Barack Obama.

Following the 9/11 attacks, President Bush also presided over a restructuring of the American national security apparatus and the passage of the Patriot Act, which gave the government vast new powers in the effort to combat future acts of terror. Both efforts, especially the Patriot Act, sparked strong divisions within the American people throughout the Bush presidency. In 2002 and into 2003, Bush used the fear of further terrorist attacks to argue for a preemptive war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq under the rationale that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The initial attacks and invasion were extremely successful and popular but in the end no weapons of mass destruction were found anywhere in the country and a strong insurgency arose that resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 Americans over the next eight years. The war grew increasingly unpopular, and the Democrats used it as a major wedge issue in the 2006 and 2008 elections, in which they first took over Congress and then the White House two years later.

On the domestic front, the Bush presidency scored early successes in gaining passage of large tax reductions and a major reform of the American educational system with the No Child Left Behind Act. The tax cuts, however, were not made permanent, as the President wished, and the bipartisan education reforms proved very controversial with their emphasis on testing and school report cards. The tax cuts were eventually made permanent during budget negotiations in the Obama administration but No Child Left Behind was eventually replaced with a new national education plan in 2015.

After his reelection in 2004, Bush sought major changes to Social Security, arguing a partial privatization plan could insure its solvency. He spent considerable political capital seeking such a change, but his efforts went nowhere in Congress. He also sought major immigration reforms that never materialized. As the tax cuts of 2001 reduced revenue to the government, while spending continued to increase partly due to the expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the federal government racked up large deficits. Ultimately, those deficits, exacerbated by the financial recession of 2008, helped create a politically impactful insurgency on the political right that went under the banner of the "Tea Party." The last few months of the Bush presidency were marked by a major crash of the stock market, a controversial bail out of financial institutions and car companies, and a recession that would wipe out millions of jobs and impact the U.S. economy for many years.

The Bush presidency transformed American politics, its economy, and its place in the world, but not in ways that could have been predicted when the governor of Texas declared his candidacy for America's highest office. As President, Bush became a lightning rod for controversy. His controversial election and policies, especially the war in Iraq, deeply divided the American people. Arguably his greatest moment as President was his initial, heartfelt response to the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks. Soon, however, his administration was overshadowed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush's place in U.S. history will be debated and reconsidered for many years to come.

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George W. Bush: Impact and Legacy | Miller Center

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The legacy of George W. Bush remains, much like his 2000 election, a subject of profound controversy, and any truly objective evaluation will likely be years in the future. He entered office as one of only a handful Presidents to lose the nation's popular vote.

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George W. Bush, America's 43rd President (2001-2009), was transformed into a wartime President in the aftermath of the airborne terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, facing the "greatest challenge of any President since Abraham Lincoln."

The airborne terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the thwarted flight against the White House or Capitol on September 11, 2001, in which nearly 3,000 Americans were killed, transformed George W. Bush into a wartime president. The attacks put on hold many of Bush's hopes and plans, and Bush's father, George Bush, the 41st president, declared that his son "faced the greatest challenge of any president since Abraham Lincoln."

In response, Bush formed a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, sent American forces into Afghanistan to break up the Taliban, a movement under Osama bin Laden that trained financed and exported terrorist teams. The Taliban was successfully disrupted but Bin Laden was not captured and was still on the loose as Bush began his second term. Following the attacks, the president also recast the nation's intelligence gathering and analysis services, and ordered reform of the military forces to meet the new enemy. At the same time he delivered major tax cuts which had been a campaign pledge. His most controversial act was the invasion of Iraq on the belief that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed a grave threat to the United States. Saddam was captured, but the disruption of Iraq and the killing of American servicemen and friendly Iraqis by insurgents became the challenge of Bush's government as he began his second term. President Bush pledged during his 2005 State of the Union Address that the United States would help the Iraqi people establish a fully democratic government because the victory of freedom in Iraq would strengthen a new ally in the war on terror, bring hope to a troubled region, and lift a threat from the lives of future generations.

Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut while his father was attending Yale University after service in World War II. The family moved to Midland, Texas, where the senior Bush entered the oil exploration business. The son spent formative years there, attended Midland public schools, and formed friendships that stayed with him into the White House. Bush graduated from Yale, received a business degree from Harvard, and then returned to Midland where he too got into the oil business. In Midland he met and married Laura Welch, a teacher and librarian. They had twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, now out of college and pursuing careers.

When George W. Bush, at the age of 54, became the 43rd president of the United States, it was only the second time in American history that a president's son went on to the White House. John Quincy Adams, elected the sixth president in 1824, was the son of John Adams, the second president. While John Adams had groomed his son to be president, George Bush, the 41st president, insisted he was surprised when the eldest of his six children became interested in politics, became governor of Texas, and then went on to the White House.

During the early part of the 2000 campaign for the White House, Bush enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls over his opponent Vice President Al Gore Jr. But the gap closed as the election approached and though Gore finally won the popular vote by 543,895 votes, victory or loss of the presidency hinged on Florida's electoral votes. That struggle through recounts and lawsuits worked its way to the Supreme Court. In the end Bush won the electoral count 271 to 266. His new administration was focused on "compassionate conservatism," which embraced excellence in education, tax relief and volunteerism among faith-based and community organizations.

Bush was challenged in his re-election bid in 2004 by Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry. The election was a good contest, but Bush's contention that the invasion of Iraq had made the world more secure against terrorism won the national political debate. Bush was re-elected with 51 percent to 48 percent.

On the inaugural stand, George W. Bush set the theme for his second term: "At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For half a century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet- and then there came a day of fire. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom - tested but not weary... we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."
The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from "The Presidents of the United States of America," by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.
Learn more about George W. Bush's spouse, Laura Welch Bush.

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George W. Bush, America's 43rd President (2001-2009), was transformed into a wartime President in the aftermath of the airborne terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, facing the "greatest challenge of any President since Abraham Lincoln."

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The last ghostly patch of snow slips away-

with it-winter's peaceful abandon melts
into a memory, and you remember the mire
of muck just outside your kitchen window
is the garden you've struggled and promised
to keep. Jeans dyed black by years of dirt,
you step into the ache of your boots again,
clear dead spoils, trowel the soil for new life.

The sun shifts on the horizon, lights up
the dewed spider webs like chandeliers.
Clouds begin sailing in, cargoed with rain
loud enough to rouse the flowers into
a race for color: the rouged tulips clash
with the noble lilies flaunting their petals
at the brazen puffs of allium, the mauve
tongues of the iris gossip sweet-nothings
into the wind, trembling frail petunias.

Mornings over coffee, news of the world,
you catch the magic act of hummingbirds-
appearing, disappearing-the eye tricked
into seeing how the garden flowers thrive
in shared soil, drink from the same rainfall,
governed by one sun, yet grow divided
in their beds where they've laid for years.
In the ruts between bands of color, ragweed
poke their dastard heads, dandelions cough
their poison seeds, and thistles like daggers
draw their spiny leaves and take hold.

The garden loses ground, calls you to duty
again: with worn gloves molded by the toll
of your toil, and armed with sheers, you tear
into the weeds, snip head-bowed blooms,
prop their struggling stems. Butterfly wings
wink at you, hinting it's all a ruse, as you rest
on your deck proud of your calloused palms
and pained knees, trusting all you've done
is true enough to keep the garden abloom.

But overnight, a vine you've never battled
creeps out of the dark furrows, scales
the long necks of the sunflowers, chokes
every black-eyed Susan, and coils around
the peonies, beheading them all. You snap
apart its greedy tendrils, cast your hands
back into the dirt, pull at its ruthless roots.
Still, it returns with equal fury and claim:
the red poppies scream, the blue asters
gasp for air, strangled in its vile clasp
that lives by killing everything it touches.

The sun's eye closes behind mountains, but
you lose sleep tonight, uncertain if the garden
is meant to inevitably survive or die, or if
it matters-one way or the other-with or
without you. Maybe it's not just the garden
you worry about, but something we call hope
pitted against despair, something we can only
speak of by speaking to ourselves about flowers,
weeds, and hummingbirds; spiders, vines, and
a garden tended under a constitution of stars
we must believe in, splayed across our sky.

To love a country as if you've lost one: 1968,
my mother leaves Cuba for America, a scene
I imagine as if standing in her place-one foot
inside a plane destined for a country she knew
only as a name, a color on a map, or glossy photos
from drugstore magazines, her other foot anchored
to the platform of her patria, her hand clutched
around one suitcase, taking only what she needs
most: hand-colored photographs of her family,
her wedding veil, the doorknob of her house,
a jar of dirt from her backyard, goodbye letters
she won't open for years. The sorrowful drone
of engines, one last, deep breath of familiar air
she'll take with her, one last glimpse at all
she'd ever known: the palm trees wave goodbye
as she steps onto the plane, the mountains shrink
from her eyes as she lifts off into another life.

To love a country as if you've lost one: I hear her
-once upon a time-reading picture books over my shoulder at bedtime, both of us learning English, sounding out words as strange as the talking animals and fair-haired princesses in their pages. I taste her first attempts at macaroni-n-cheese (but with chorizo and peppers), and her shame over Thanksgiving turkeys always dry, but countered by her perfect porkpernil and garlic yuca. I smell the rain of those mornings huddled as one under one umbrella waiting for the bus to her ten-hour days at the cash register. At night, the zzz-zzz of her sewing her own blouses,quinceañera dresses for her nieces still in Cuba, guessing at their sizes, and the gowns she'd sell to neighbors to save for a rusty white sedan- no hubcaps, no air-conditioning, sweating all the way through our first vacation to Florida theme parks. To love a country as if you've lost one: as if it were you on a plane departing from America forever, clouds closing like curtains on your country, the last scene in which you're a madman scribbling the names of your favorite flowers, trees, and birds you'd never see again, your address and phone number you'd never use again, the color of your father's eyes, your mother's hair, terrified you could forget these. To love a country as if I was my mother last spring hobbling, insisting I help her climb all the way up to the U.S. Capitol, as if she were here before you today instead of me, explaining her tears, cheeks pink as the cherry blossoms coloring the air that day when she stopped, turned to me, and said: You know,mijo, it isn't where you're born that matters, it's where you choose to die-that's your country.

There should be nothing here I don't remember . . .

The Gulf Motel with mermaid lampposts
and ship's wheel in the lobby should still be
rising out of the sand like a cake decoration.
My brother and I should still be pretending
we don't know our parents, embarrassing us
as they roll the luggage cart past the front desk
loaded with our scruffy suitcases, two-dozen
loaves of Cuban bread, brown bags bulging
with enough mangos to last the entire week,
our espresso pot, the pressure cooker-and
a pork roast reeking garlic through the lobby.
All because we can't afford to eat out, not even
on vacation, only two hours from our home
in Miami, but far enough away to be thrilled
by whiter sands on the west coast of Florida,
where I should still be for the first time watching
the sun set instead of rise over the ocean.

There should be nothing here I don't remember . . .

My mother should still be in the kitchenette stirring a pot of
of The Gulf Motel, her daisy sandals from Kmart
squeaking across the linoleum, still gorgeous
in her teal swimsuit and amber earrings

of onion powder and dollops of tomato sauce.
arroz-con-pollo, adding sprinkles My father should still be in a terrycloth jacket
smoking, clinking a glass of amber whiskey
in the sunset at the Gulf Motel, watching us
dive into the pool, two boys he'll never see
grow into men who will be proud of him.

There should be nothing here I don't remember . . .

My brother and I should still be playing Parcheesi,
my father should still be alive, slow dancing
with my mother on the sliding-glass balcony
of The Gulf Motel. No music, only the waves
keeping time, a song only their minds hear
ten-thousand nights back to their life in Cuba.
My mother's face should still be resting against
his bare chest like the moon resting on the sea,
the stars should still be turning around them.

There should be nothing here I don't remember . . .

My brother should still be thirteen, sneaking
rum in the bathroom, sculpting naked women
from sand. I should still be eight years old
dazzled by seashells and how many seconds
I hold my breath underwater-but I'm not.
I am thirty-eight, driving up Collier Boulevard,
looking for The Gulf Motel, for everything
that should still be, but isn't. I want to blame
the condos, their shadows for ruining the beach
and my past, I want to chase the snowbirds away
with their tacky mansions and yachts, I want
to turn the golf courses back into mangroves,
I want to find The Gulf Motel exactly as it was
and pretend for a moment, nothing lost is lost.

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The last ghostly patch of snow slips away- with it-winter's peaceful abandon melts into a memory, and you remember the mire of muck just outside your kitchen window is the garden you've struggled and promised to keep. Jeans dyed black by years of dirt, you step into the ache of your boots again, clear dead spoils, trowel the soil for new life.

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Category:Films set in the Great Recession - Wikipedia

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CRISPR in TV and Movies

CRISPR and genetic engineering have been featured in film and movies for years and years because of how compelling the concept is.

In the real world, CRISPR is making amazing breakthroughs, and its limitless possibilities sure makes for good TV. If you're interested in the idea of mixing the science of genetic engineering with science fiction, then you'll love our list of CRISPR and genetics in TV shows and movies.

We've organized these CRISPR cameonatus into the following categories for whatever you happen to be in the mood to watch:

Movies You'll Love

Movies You'll Love to Hate

Genetic Engineering in TV Shows

Let's get started with the all-time best appearances of CRISPR and genetic engineering in blockbuster movies we love.

Movies You'll Love

Some of these movies were the pioneers of including genetic engineering in sci-fi-before CRISPR was even a thing, while other recent films are using CRISPR's new applications and taking them to a whole new level. If you're looking for the old and soon-to-be classics of CRISPR-themed movies, this is where you should start.

Director: Adam Bolt

Actors: David Baltimore, Jill Banfield, Rodolphe Barrangou, Alta Charo, Emmanuelle Charpentier, George Church, George Daley, Jennifer Doudna, Hank Greely, Ian Hodder, Stephen Hsu, Kelsey McClelland, Francisco Mojica, Ryan Phelan, Matthew Porteus, Antonio Regalado, David Sanchez, Fyodor Urnov, Ethan Weiss, Palmer Weiss, Ruthie Weiss, Luhan Yang, Feng Zhang, and Kevin Holden

The biggest tech revolution of the 21st century isn't digital, it's biological. A breakthrough called CRISPR gives us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing disease, reshaping the biosphere, and impacting our day-to-day lives.

Human Nature plunges headlong into the nuances of microbial immune systems and the surprising and serendipitous path of discovery by talking to the scientists whose research made all this possible. The film also zooms out to consider the broader-and sometimes controversial-social implications. As CRISPR crests into global consciousness, it is vital that the ethical debate that ensues is based on science and not hyperbole. Ultimately, CRISPR is a tool, albeit one with great power, and it will be up to us humans to determine how we will use its potential. How will this new power change our relationship with nature? What will it mean for human evolution? This film will hopefully spur conversations among diverse lay audiences and scientists.

Not yet released, the film has already received high praise and touted as " the best CRISPR primer yet."

Trailer:

Wider Release Coming Soon. More Information Available Here.

Rampage (2018)

Director: Brad Peyton

Actors: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris

Davis Okoye (played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), a primatologist, who is close friends with a rare albino silverback gorilla, has his life turned upside down when he discovers CRISPR has been used to mutate his primate buddy into a gigantic, uncontrollable beast. The premise of this film is that CRISPR technology is designated as a "Weapon of Mass Destruction and Proliferation," and a biopharma company has misused the science, creating large, hybrid animals, who have unchecked aggression.

Okoye struggles through the action-packed movie to try to reverse the CRISPR process to save his gorilla, and set right the "science gone wrong." Though this film's use of CRISPR technology is not completely realistic, it is certainly the most outright mention of CRISPR science in film that currently exists. We're hoping it will get CRISPR some more of the attention it deserves, like when Dwayne Johnson mentions CRISPR on Ellen.

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video ($)

X-Men (2000)

Director: Bryan Singer

Actors: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry

X-Men is known as the loveable, rag-tag, collection of Marvel superheroes - all with genetic mutations that cause their superpowers - who band together to help fight crime. One of the main characters, Professor Xavier, dedicates his life to the study of these genetic mutations and what causes them. Though these films don't explicitly mention CRISPR, there are some notable parallels.

Though the superpowers are naturally occurring in this series (the mutants are born with them), there are some exceptions. "Wolverine" (Hugh Jackman), arguably the most beloved character, was a victim of forced genetic engineering on top of his naturally-occurring mutations in an attempt to "improve" his abilities. In the original series, a pharmaceutical company also aims to rid the world of mutants by using the DNA of a mutant whose power blocks the effects of other mutants to develop a cure that suppresses the "X-Gene" that causes the mutation of humans.

Jurassic Park (1993) / Jurassic World (2015)

Director: Steven Spielberg / Colin Trevorrow

Actors: Sam Niell, Laura Dern / Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard

Jurassic Park has been revered as a classic for years, and Jurassic World helped revitalize the franchise with yet another example of good intentions gone wrong. In Jurassic Park, an alternative version of present-day earth shows scientists using the DNA of dinosaurs found within a mosquito preserved in amber to recreate many species of dinosaurs that were previously extinct.

Jurassic World emphasizes the genetic engineering aspect of bringing the dinosaurs to life even more, as they experiment with combining the genes of multiple organisms. The Indominus Rex - a brand new species - is created by using the genetic makeup of a T-Rex, and adding DNA from the Velociraptor, Giganotosaurus, cuttlefish, tree frogs, vipers, and more. The result: a dinosaur that has abilities the scientists didn't anticipate, who goes completely out of human control aiming to destroy the park and everything in it.

Elysium (2013)

Director: Neill Blomkamp

Actors: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster

Taking place in the year 2159, a luxury space station houses only the ultrarich in society, all of whom have access to incredible medical care that can diagnose and remove any injury, disease, or other issue in a matter of minutes - while the rest of humanity struggles to survive on Earth.

One of the best parts of this film is the representation of an advanced medical pod that is not only able to cure diseases that were previously incurable ( a promising aspect of CRISPR science), but can also detect and cure them in a matter of seconds. In the film, this pod is able to detect and remove Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in a young girl in under 20 seconds.

Spider-Man (2002) / The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Director: Sam Raimi / Marc Webb

Actors: Toby Maguire, Kirsten Dunst / Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone

The Spider-Man universe includes more than one version of how Spider-Man gets his powers, but in the original movie (with Toby Maguire), Peter Parker is bitten by a spider who itself was genetically engineered to have enhanced powers. After a little nausea and a good night's sleep, those powers and spider-like qualities manifest in Peter Parker and Spider-Man is born.

In The Amazing Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield), there is also the added genetic altering component of the villain, Dr. Connors, whose research develops a serum that aims to create perfect limb regeneration using genetic modification. Though the serum does regrow his arm, has a number of other unwanted side effects as well.

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video ($)

Gattaca (1997)

Director: Andrew Niccol

Actors: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law

Gattaca has been revered for years as a look into the possible future of the real-world consequences of human control over their own genetics. In this "future" of Earth, genetics are quantified and publicly registered - anyone can know what makes up your body, and how likely you are to develop diseases in the future. As the main character Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) states at the start of the film: "My real resumé was in my cells."

In this film, Vincent is unable to fulfill his lifelong dream of traveling to outer space because of his inferior genetics; the society refers to these people as "in-valids." In an attempt to remedy that, he actually purchases the genetic identity of another man. In this bleak portrayal of the consequences of genetic discrimination, people go so far as to bring printouts of their genetic ID on first dates just to get it out of the way!

Okja (2017)

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Actors: Seo-hyun Ahn, Tilda Swinton

For 10 years, a young girl named Mija has cared for her beloved Okja, a giant pig-like animal. They lived peacefully in the rural mountains of South Korea until a conglomerate corporation takes Okja away to New York to use it to generate revenue. The company claims they will revolutionize the livestock industry with larger animals that produce more meat while consuming less feed. Mija begins a long journey to try to rescue Okja.

In this film, Okja was genetically engineered with the purpose of increased meat production in mind. The themes this film explores are very applicable to many of the current debates surrounding GMOs, and particularly, the current meat industry's standards for what it does to animals.

Where to Stream: Netflix

Deadpool (2016)

Director: Tim Miller

Actors: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller

Deadpool - everyone's favorite anti-hero - spends this film aiming to get back at the man who experimented on him, and countless others, in an attempt to create - yep, you guessed it - human super soldiers. This film depicts a villain who collects "volunteers" who think they will be turned into super soldiers once injected with a serum, but instead, are tortured until their bodies create enough adrenaline to activate the serum.

The main character Wade Wilson's (Ryan Reynolds) modification manifests in the form of accelerated healing - essentially to the point of immortality. His limbs can regenerate, his body can even eject bullets that pierced through his skull. This film depicts the ever-so-interesting concept that genetic modification of humans could one day lead to superpowers.

Blade Runner (1982)

Director: Ridley Scott

Actors: Harrison Ford, Sean Young

Blade Runner is a classic sci-fi movie that depicts a future (2019) in which the police force is tasked with hunting down and eliminating residual bioengineered beings known as "replicants." These modified humans have super strength, super speed, increased agility, resilience to force, and of course, are extremely intelligent.

In this film, the only way a "replicant" can be identified is using the "Voight-Kampff Test," a polygraph-like test that measures heart rate, eye movement, and even blushing while answering emotionally provocative questions to determine whether a being is truly human. Though a bit more action-driven than it is a "make you think" type of movie - it's definitely worth the watch if you love the fear that other more intelligent species will one day supersede humans.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Director: Nicholas Meyer

Actors: William Shatner, Leonard Nemoy, Ricardo Montalbán

Khan Noonien Singh, one of the most beloved villains in the Star Trek universe, is noted in his first appearance (Episode 22 "Space Seed") as a remnant of 20th century selective breeding that aimed to create the "perfect human." Instead of these "perfect" humans all getting along and making the world a better place, they (of course) conquered more than ⅓ of the globe together and became warlords launching a globe-wide eugenic war.

Though only the plot for the first appearance of Khan in season 1 of Star Trek, the battles between Khan and Kirk explore the fear that genetically engineered humans will overpower the rest of us regular Joes that are left unaltered. If you love some classic sci-fi, this movie is for you.

Those are the movies featuring CRISPR that should make for a fun watch, but these next few, though applicable to genetic engineering and modification, don't exactly hold up to today's standards. They sure can be fun to watch though!

Movies You'll Love to Hate

These movies feature genetic engineering and CRISPR modifications, but the overall plot and execution of the movie isn't really something to write home about. If you love some bad dialogue or cheesy sci-fi, these are the films for you.

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Director: Renny Harlin

Actors: Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson, LL Cool J

A classic movie that many people think doesn't necessarily hold up to today's standards (or never did in the first place), this shark-attack thriller is an interesting take on science's current attempts to cure prominent diseases. In this film, scientists use brain cells from sharks to cure Alzheimer's disease - until, of course, everything goes wrong.

Though the science is proven to work in the film, the scientists enhanced the sharks in ways that help them hunt humans even more effectively when chaos ensues in an underwater research lab. If you want to see a hilarious and action-packed movie where scientific scenarios meet LL Cool J and Samuel L. Jackson's sense of humor, then this movie is for you.

Resident Evil (2002)

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Actors: Milla Jovovivh, Michelle Rodriguez

In this video game-based film, the "Umbrella Corporation," creates something called the "t-Virus" which mutates humans and animals, essentially, turning them into various types of zombies. A former Umbrella employee named Alice (played by Milla Jovovich) turns into a warrior, battling the zombies while attempting to uncover the truth about what happened to the world, which has now fallen into utter chaos.

This movie examines the apocalyptic results of a world in which big corporations experimenting with genetic mutation are left unchecked. Of course, the premise is a bit of a stretch here as the primary goal of the original development of the t-Virus was to "improve" the human race on a large scale. With 6 films gradually uncovering what happened to humanity, you'll be entertained for hours!

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video ($)

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)

Director: George Lucas

Actors: Hayden Christiensen, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman

The Star Wars series likely needs no introduction, as it has been one of the most successful film franchises of all time. Yet - it might not have occurred to you that Episode II - Attack of the Clones is actually largely about genetic engineering. It becomes clear that some kind of dark force has built an army of clones to help fight a war they are trying to create in a relatively peaceful world.

In the film, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) discovers a facility that is building clones. They are shown as growing in womb-like containers, but the creator describes how they are genetically modified to allow for growth acceleration (half the time of a normal human), total obedience, and less independence than the human they are modeled after.

A big point made in the film is that these human clones are superior to the "droids" - machines that are widely built and utilized throughout the universe - a very applicable point of discussion in today's society.

Where to Stream: Nowhere currently!

Splice (2009)

Director: Vincenzo Natali

Actors: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley

In this horror/thriller - a seemingly successful experiment goes awry when geneticists specializing in creating species hybrids do an experiment with humans (though they are forbidden), and create "Dren," a human/animal hybrid. A great example of how science needs to be aware of the consequences associated with genetic engineering, yet not a blockbuster film that's going to make you question whether genetic engineering should continue in the world. If you like some scary scenes that make you jump, this is the film for you.

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video ($)

The Fly (1986)

Director: David Cronenberg

Actors: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis

The principle of this film isn't quite as directly related to CRISPR as some of the others we've mentioned, but it is a classic for many reasons. A scientist perfects a teleportation device, but unfortunately, a fly slips in while he is transporting himself. The result is the slow transformation over time of the genetic merging of fly and man. This movie examines more of the emotional toll a big mistake like this during an experiment would make.

Mimic (1997)

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Actors: Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam

In this film, it's the classic story of humans trying to solve a major issue, but drastically underestimating what it is they've really done until all chaos breaks loose in the world. An evolutionary biologist and her team of researchers whip up a species of bugs to infiltrate the cockroach plague that is decimating New York city. The idea is that this new species of bugs will infiltrate the cockroaches by mimicking them and then destroying them, but instead, they continue to evolve and set their sights on eliminating humans instead.

Sharktopus (2010)

Director: Declan O'Brien

Actos: Eric Roberts, Kerem Bürsin

When the military genetically engineers a half-shark/half-octopus to use as a weapon, the creature, of course, has a mind of its own and goes on a rampage - killing everything in its path. If you loved films like Sharknado (2013) where the premise is a bit of a stretch but it made for great entertainment (despite the fact it's not really a great movie), this kind of film is perfect for you.

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video ($)

Island of Lost Souls (1932)

Director: Erle C. Kenton

Actors: Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams

This is a classic old film you might want to check out if you love old movies - or old books - as this film is based on the premise of the classic Victorian-era novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), written by H. G. Wells. In this film, a man is shipwrecked on a remote island with a scientist who initially appears normal, but after a series of events, it becomes clear that this scientist is using the island to conduct genetic experiments. This film (and book) is one of the earliest examples of the moral quandaries associated with genetic engineering, and asks the classic question of humans: just because we can do something, does it mean we should?

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video ($)

If you're in the mood for some TV instead of a film, these TV shows all involve CRISPR or genetic editing.

Genetic Engineering in TV Shows

Luke Cage (2016-present)

Actors: Mike Colter, Simone Missick, Theo Rossi

In this addition to the ever-growing Marvel universe, a loveable down-and-out but morally principled man uses his incredible strength and powers to clean up the mean streets of Harlem. Each episode is packed with great action scenes, as well as cameo appearances of various Marvel characters.

This TV show actually references the CRISPR technique, claiming: "We used a process called CRISPR to fuse the subject's DNA with another DNA to gain its attributes." In the show, the experiment was obviously botched, creating another superhero, but it's a big win for CRISPR as the show is generally well put together, and Luke Cage is a loveable hero.

Where to Stream: Netflix

Heroes (2006-2010)

Actors: Hayden Panettiere, Zachary Quinto, Sendhil Ramamurthy

Heroes gained a lot of popularity in the sci-fi community, due to its large cast and amalgamation of stories from various perspectives - it had many loveable heroes and loveable villains! In this series, seemingly normal humans discover at various times that they have superpowers, and aim to find and protect each other while thwarting various attempts on their lives.

All of the characters in this series are born with their powers, except for one - Mohinder Suresh - who learns how to genetically alter humans to give them powers, and does this to himself. Similar to the X-Men film series, what he discovers becomes an incredibly dangerous threat to the other people who have powers.

Where to Stream: Nowhere currently!

Orphan Black (2013-2017)

Actors: Tatiana Maslany, Dylan Bruce, Jordan Gavaris

Orphan Black tells the story of Sarah Manning, a con artist who through an act of fate, realizes that she is a clone, and that multiple clones of her exist throughout the world, all of whom are part of an illegal cloning experiment - with the added twist that someone is out to kill her, and all of her clones.

Though this action-packed cloning conspiracy story is not specific to CRISPR, a lot of the issues Sara faces, including the effort to control human life, an unchecked and overpowered biotech corporation, a eugenics program, and political lobbyists, all fit within the standard archetype of the sci-fi genre and could relate to CRISPR-based science fiction.

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video ($)

Dark Angel (2000-2002)

Actors: Jessica Alba

In this short series starring Jessica Alba, a genetically enhanced nine-year-old super soldier escapes from a secret U.S. government facility with others like her to avoid the place they are trained to be assassins and soldiers used for ideologies they don't believe in. Yet again, we stumble upon the desire to create enhanced human beings, and the dissatisfaction with the fact that these enhanced beings, for some reason, don't want to blindly follow orders.

Where to Stream: Nowhere currently!

The Simpsons - "The Man Who Grew Too Much"

(Season 25 - Episode 13)

Actors: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardly Smith

The Simpsons, a TV classic for almost 30 years, of course, has an episode related to CRISPR-style genetic engineering. In this episode, Lisa discovers that the vegetables in the cafeteria are genetically modified so that they won't rot. Lisa embarks on a research mission to determine if there are side effects to this and if GMOs are a good thing or not. You'll have to watch this entertaining half-hour show to see which perspective she takes on it!

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (2002-2003)

Actors: Sôichirô Hoshim, Ted Cole, Brian Dobson

This popular anime series takes a look at the conflicts that arise between the Earth-dwelling "Naturals" and the genetically-altered superhumans known as "Coordinators." The central conflict derives mostly from the jealousy of the Naturals, and hatred of their enhanced abilities. This leads to many hate crimes and eventually, an all-out war. Very applicable to the possible issues surrounding genetically enhanced humans, and how they would be treated if they were to exist.

Andromeda (2000-2005)

Actors: Kevin Sorbo, Lisa Ryder, Laura Bertram

In this show, set thousands of years in the future, a territory-based struggle between humans and the genetically engineered "Nietzscheans" leads to many questions of right and wrong based on human genetic engineering. The differences in the "species" is a central point of conflict throughout the series, but in general, this is a great 5 seasons of solid sci-fi.

Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video

CRISPR is Making Science Fiction More Real Than Ever

Not only is CRISPR the subject of movies, but it turns out CRISPR technology can also be used to store a digital copy of a movie in living bacterial DNA. Is that not more entertaining than a rampaging gorilla or a theme park filled with dinosaurs?

Genetics and genetic engineering play so well into sci-fi because our DNA is what separates us from other organisms. Humans consider themselves the most advanced species on the planet, and the fear that science will go one step too far and change that sure makes for an entertaining film.

However, it's always important to remember the science behind TV and the movies isn't always perfectly sound. Be sure to check out the rest of our blog to get the real facts on what's going on with CRISPR these days.

If you have a suggestion for this list and want to see your favorite CRISPR-themed movie or TV show represented, we'd love to hear from you! Get in touch on Twitter or Facebook, or send us an email to [email protected] .

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Best Movies and TV Shows Featuring CRISPR and Genetic Engineering

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CRISPR technology is relatively new, but genetic engineering ideas have been depicted in film and TV shows for decades. This mega list of the best movies and TV shows featuring CRISPR show you where to start - either with classics that still hold up - or terrible sci-fi that will still make you laugh.

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Twenty years ago today, the International Genome Sequencing Consortium published the first detailed analysis of the human genome. The paper appeared online in Nature on 15 February 2001, followed by a special issue published in Science. This was a huge step forward for the Human Genome Project, regarded by many as biology's moon shot.

"The draft human genome, followed by thousands of others, has had a huge impact on biology and medicine. The impact has been especially great in cancer research, enabling us to understand the fundamental nature of what goes wrong to cause cancer and helping us to discover innovative precision medicines," says Professor Paul Workman, Chief Executive of the ICR.

Sequencing the entire human genome - which essentially means uncovering all of the genetic material in a person: a complete set of DNA instructions - was no mean feat. In humans, that includes 23 pairs of chromosomes, containing around 20-25,000 genes, made up of approximately 3 billion base pairs of DNA.

Scientists knew this genetic data would reveal important information regarding how genes are organised and how they function - providing vital insights to help us fight diseases like cancer.

Most diseases are linked to mutations - alterations to our DNA. These diseases can be 'Mendelian' diseases like cystic fibrosis - resulting from mutations in a single gene - or they can be 'complex and common' disorders like Alzheimer's - which result from changes in multiple genes.

Cancer is also a complex and common disease - in fact, it's the most common human genetic disease, and it results from genetic changes that encourage cells to divide uncontrollably.
Find out how we're using genomics technologies in our research. Find out more
The impact of the Human Genome Project

With all of this new and powerful genetic information, scientists were hoping to develop a new approach to understanding human diseases and, eventually, to preventing and treating them.

Understanding the genome requires knowing its different parts, how they interact, and what their functions are. Uncovering the human genome sequence was an important first step in the right direction, helping us categorise each part of each human gene - as well as the non-coding genetic material, which is also important and can act as a regulatory element, helping to turn genes on and off.

This vast amount of information provided evidence on genetic variations that can lead to disease or increase the risk of developing disease.

Today, we can sequence the DNA in cancer cells and compare that to the sequence found by the Human Genome Project. This allows scientists to work out which genes are mutated - improving our understanding of inherited diseases and even helping develop genetically targeted medicines.

That means that, when it comes to cancer, we can better categorise tumours by studying their genetic changes. This often helps us find better, more targeted treatments.

For example, patients with breast and ovarian cancer who have a mutation in specific genes called BRCA1 or BRCA2 respond very well to olaparib - the world's first cancer drug targeted against inherited genetic faults. This treatment option only works for patients with a mutation in DNA repair genes like BRCA1 or BRCA2 - so you can see why it's important to know which genes are mutated in a tumour.
We identified the breast cancer gene BRCA2, which enabled families with a history of breast cancer to be assessed for future risk, and laid the groundwork for developing novel forms of therapy for BRCA-associated cancers.
How it's helping our research

Although mapping the human genome was a great achievement, scientists are still trying to make sense of a lot of the information they now have access to. The information gap is substantial - but thanks to research, we are getting closer to closing it.

"There are so many things about the human genome that are fascinating and continue to surprise and intrigue us," says Professor Jessica Downs, Deputy Head of the Division of Cancer Biology and Team Leader in Epigenetics and Genome Stability at the ICR. "From the first publication of the human genome, we had a rich dataset that opened up wonderful new avenues for research. But the progress in genome sequencing since then has been striking."

"Our research makes use of human genome sequences every day. Since the first human genome sequence was assembled and published, hundreds of thousands of human genomes have been sequenced.

"For example, we started working on the SWI/SNF chromatin remodelling complex around 20 years ago. We found that it was important for genome stability and DNA damage responses, and therefore we thought that it might play a role in preventing cancer. This complex consists of a group of proteins that help modify the way DNA is packaged.

"It was only through this largescale sequencing of human genomes that we realised how fundamentally important SWI/SNF is to cancer biology.

"It's clear now that around 30 per cent of all human cancers have an alteration in the sequence of the genes encoding SWI/SNF. The original efforts to sequence the human genome and make it publicly accessible paved the way for these findings, and made an enormous contribution to our understanding of cancer."
Image: Professor Jessica Downs
Transforming the way we diagnose and treat disease

Not only has our knowledge of the human genome's sequence transformed our understanding of human diseases like cancer, but also our ability to treat it. We're moving towards a medicine that is predictive, preventive and personalised.

Genomics had not entered the mainstream healthcare setting until very recently. Just over a decade ago, being able to sequence the genome of a patient with an unknown disease in order to achieve a diagnosis was uncommon. Now, it is a reality for many people, especially those who are suspected of having a rare genetic disease.

In fact, it could become routine in a not so distant future. Professor Ros Eeles, who is Professor of Oncogenetics at the ICR, leads the 90S Study together with a co-lead, Dr Michael Sandberg, Honorary Clinical Fellow at the ICR and General Practitioner. Their initiative looks at how genomic medicine could be integrated into primary care in the UK.

As part of the study, researchers will analyse the entire 'germline'genetic code of people attending a GP surgery and report on around 600 separate genetic changes known to be associated with a range of diseases, including cancer. Germline mutations are those that can be passed on from parent to offspring.

"Over the last quarter of a century, we've seen incredible progress in identifying genetic alterations that are linked to the risk of diseases like cancer, opening up the possibility to intervene early to improve patients' health," says Professor Ros Eeles.

"The aim of the 90S study is to use genetic screening as a practical way of picking up genes associated with cancer and other diseases, so that doctors can act sooner rather than later.

"The project, which is ongoing, will give us crucial information about whether genetic screening in primary care could be feasible, and how we should go about seeking to implement it within the NHS."
Image: Professor Ros Eeles
Powering drug discovery

Another area that benefitted from the discovery of the human genome sequence is drug discovery. Knowledge of all the human genes and their functions created new opportunities for discovering and developing novel drugs, changing research strategy and how researchers approach drug discovery.

By being able to apply genomic technologies such as gene sequencing to drugs that are being developed, scientists can speed up the process by figuring out in a more efficient way whether certain drugs act on their target, while also gaining insights into drug metabolism.

"The Human Genome Project initiative and technologies were the engine that started up the international Cancer Genome projects enabling the mapping of the genomes of hundreds of thousands of cancer patients. Through this, we were able to rapidly uncover cancer driver genes, and to discover drugs for those, at unprecedented speeds," says Professor Bissan Al-Lazikani, who leads the Computational Biology and Chemogenomics Team at the ICR.

For example, about half of all melanomas - a type of skin cancer - have genetic changes in the BRAF gene. The mutated BRAF protein helps these cancers grow. Being able to sequence the human genome was key to identifying drugs that are able to target this mutated protein. Another example is a targeted drug approved for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), which targets IDH1 gene mutations.

"Importantly, having access to the human genome sequence and new genomic technologies is also vastly improving our ability to stratify patients for therapy and empower clinical trials to deliver new drugs to patients," says Professor Al-Lazikani. "In fact, a study I co-led, which focused on analysing the mechanisms of action of all approved drugs, showed that oncology is the area where most innovation in new drugs has happened in the previous 10 years - which are the years that have benefitted from the data obtained from the Human Genome Project."

We played a major role in characterising the BRAF gene and its role in cancer.

Looking ahead

There is no denying that identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome has brought progress to many fields, especially cancer research. As we have seen, the international, collaborative research programme accomplished a great deal.

We can feel confident that genomics will play a key role in the next decade, helping scientists make even greater advances - who knows what the next era in genomics may have in store?

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How the Human Genome Project shook the world of cancer research

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Twenty years ago, a detailed draft and analysis of the human genome was completed. In this feature, Diana Cano Bordajandi looks at the lasting legacy of the Human Genome Project.

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Collins, Suzanne.The Hunger Games #1: Hunger Games

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I like a good reality TV show. My favorites are " Deadliest Catch" and " Wicked Tuna "

Speaking of reality TV!... I've got my own reality TV show! On YouTube!

And I'm premiering a new video June 15th at 8PM featuring myself drawing the Skitter comic strip entitled " Smarter "

CHECK IT OUT!...

Current $2 Patreon patrons can see it now.

If you're not a patron, just make sure to subscribe and set your alerts.

See you at the Premiere!

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Reality TV Show- is it really reality? - SKITTER Comic Strip

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Luna is about to embark on her quest to find a unicorn spider when Chip the cricket asks if he can video her adventure and live stream it...

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Thirty years ago, MTV's "The Real World" opened with its cast members introducing the world to a new-fangled kind of storytelling: "This is the true story of seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite ... and start getting real," they said in the show opening. "The Real World," the first modern foray into reality TV, ran for more than 640 episodes - and changed television in the process.

But co-creator Jonathan Murray (with Mary-Ellis Bunim) says he never expected that kind of success: "'The Real World' was very much a social experiment. The idea of covering people 24/7 for 13 weeks nonstop hadn't been done, and it was exhausting." Still, he's back at it, with "The Real World Homecoming" spinoff now in its second season, and says, "With 'Homecoming,' we see how people [on the original series] were affected by this social experiment. Most of them seem to feel it was a positive experience."

On some level, reality TV has been a part of television since the medium's earliest days: "Candid Camera," "Queen for a Day," "Real People" and "An American Family" all played with the idea of turning cameras on nonactors in partially or fully artificial situations. But "Real World" took it to another level, spawning a genre that spread like kudzu over TV programming in the ensuing decades. Today, reality TV encompasses three nontechnical Emmy categories and blurs the lines with the documentary genre (which has its own Emmy categories). But in that time, what reality TV actually is has become equally blurry.

"When unscripted programming is at its best, it's reflective of the real world," says Brandon Riegg, vice president of unscripted and documentary shows at Netflix. "It can be one of the most broad or diverse categories: There are shows that are aspirational or influential but ultimately relational."

Adds Andy Cohen, host of Bravo's "Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen" and executive producer of "The Real Housewives" franchise, "Truth is absolutely stranger than fiction. What I love about reality is it can go anywhere. It can uplift us or it can be a dumpster fire."

Perhaps because of that transformational, shape-shifting ability, reality TV persists and has been around long enough now to infiltrate popular culture - think "The Truman Show," "The Hunger Games" and "Squid Game." The reality shows that earn Emmy nominations today are as varied as colors on the rainbow: In 2021, nominated series included "RuPaul's Drag Race: Untucked," "Below Deck," "Selling Sunset," "Queer Eye," "Antiques Roadshow" and "Shark Tank."

What will surface for 2022's Emmys? It's anyone's guess; the nature of many reality TV shows is that they can skip a year or three while preparing for the next entry, while others can have multiple "seasons" in a single year. In 2020, Netflix's "Cheer" took home three Emmys, a fact that still baffles creator Greg Whiteley.

"I couldn't venture a guess as to why 'Cheer' cleaned up so well," he says, suggesting that there has been a turn in what appeals to voters: shows that have more substance than flash, and actually show specialists excelling in their specialty - including cheerleading. "If the predominant force of entertainment skews too far in one direction, like superhero movies, or big-budget sci-fi movies, I wonder if that leaves a vacuum in people's souls where they want something more homegrown or relatable," Whiteley says.

That echoes Heidi Klum's experience. While pitching "Project Runway" in the mid-2000s, she says she was told by executives, "Why would we want to watch people sew?" Two Emmys and 19 seasons later, "Runway" is still running (though without Klum), and she's moved on to Prime Video's "Making the Cut," a similar series where she's an executive producer, a judge and a host. "We were always about finding talented people," she says. "That's the premise of everything I wanted to be a part of."

(Kyle Alexander / Netflix)

(Ilana Panich-Linsman / Netflix)

"Queer Eye," which rebooted in 2018 on Netflix and has won the structured reality program Emmy every year since, might not be about creating, but it does have that "homegrown," earnest feel Whiteley refers to. "We try to get people where they are and really learn about them," says executive producer Jennifer Lane. "We don't try to change people, just shift their shoulders in a new direction."

Not that reality TV has gone soft; there are still plenty of series that get their thrills from deprivation or embarrassment of participants, and there are lots of docu-soaps or occu-soaps (occupation-based soaps) that aim no higher than to be "aspirational." Take "Selling Sunset," which focuses on high-end real estate agents and was Emmy-nominated in 2021.

"It's a form of escapism," says executive producer Adam DiVello. "People see themselves in these shows, and it's escapism from the day-to-day. It's easy to digest and fun to watch - it's like candy. People know it's not a documentary, and it's not sold as such. We try to make it as entertaining as possible and tell a great story at the same time."

Which ultimately, no matter what the decade or type of reality show, is true for them all: telling great stories. And because of that, says "Queer Eye's" Lane, "It's never going to get old. There's the old adage about there being only 50 stories and we keep repeating them. We're having a lot of fun with this social experiment. You know that movie 'The Running Man'? That's where we're going."

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It's been 30 years since 'The Real World' introduced reality TV. How things have changed.

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Thirty years ago, MTV's "The Real World" opened with its cast members introducing the world to a new-fangled kind of storytelling: "This is the true story of seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite ...

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If you are looking for the exact moment when American culture went off the rails that it has never managed to climb back on, may we offer a singular scene on television from Feb. 15, 2000: a man in a tuxedo, bent down on one knee, proposing to a total stranger in a wedding gown. She tearfully accepts while four other women, also wearing wedding dresses, shuffle off the stage.

The nearly 23 million viewers who tuned into "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" were simultaneously riveted and horrified. But most importantly, there were 23 million of them. This would not be a one-time phenomenon, but rather the origin story for a new genre, the "reality dating show." (When the deep human need for companionship and money-hungry Hollywood executives love each other very much ...)

Since then, millions upon millions of people have spent many hours of their lives enraptured by these shows, which continue to proliferate with no sign of slowing down, like an invasive species that has become part of our natural environment. How did this happen? And what has 20 years of watching these spectacles - singles hooking up, couples breaking up and aspiring Instagram influencers melting down, all in the name of finding "love" - done to us?

To find out, we chose one reality dating show that debuted every year from 2000 through 2020 - shows that were particularly popular, controversial, influential or taught us something unexpected. (Quite a few were left out ... sorry, "Conveyor Belt of Love.") We talked to dozens of people: Contestants who loved the experience and those who regret everything. Producers who are proud of the content they made and others who could never stomach to work in the genre again. Reality TV experts who appreciate the escapism and entertainment value, but also lament the negative influence of these shows, from perpetuating damaging stereotypes to fueling the lack of representation on our screens.

Sometimes, these series are surprisingly hopeful. But mostly, they are disturbing. Deeply disturbing. But no matter how many people decry that the shows are fake and/or feel like the downfall of society, the impact has been extremely real.

2000

"Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" (Fox)

As the legend goes, the idea for "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" originated at a wedding attended by TV producer Mike Darnell, who was thinking about how to replicate the success of rival network ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" game show. He realized he could zero in on two of America's biggest anxieties: love and money.

"I kept thinking: Why is this show working? Because winning money is a huge American dream," Darnell said, according to TV reporter Bill Carter's book " Desperate Networks." "And I'm sitting here watching another huge American dream, which is getting married. What's bigger than that? Getting married to a wealthy man."

The unapologetically misogynistic concept enraged critics, who likened the spectacle to prostitution. That outrage, according to multiple accounts, was pretty much the reaction producers - which included future "Bachelor" creator Mike Fleiss - hoped for. (Darnell declined to comment.) The special was a massive hit. The groom, real estate developer Rick Rockwell, and the bride, emergency room nurse Darva Conger, set sail on a Caribbean honeymoon. Producers started plotting follow-up specials.

Then everything imploded. The Smoking Gun revealed that nine years prior, Rockwell had a restraining order filed against him by an ex-girlfriend, who alleged physical abuse. (Rockwell denied this.) Conger told media outlets she realized when she "won" that going on the show was a huge mistake, and cried herself to sleep every night. The marriage was annulled and producers launched an investigation into the negligent background check. Behind the scenes, Carter reported, Fox executives were mortified and furious, and the president declared his network was done with such exploitative trash.

However, the seeds were planted: People really would sign up to humiliate themselves on a national platform to try to find their soul mate. Viewers, apparently, would watch. Weeks into the controversy, the press couldn't stop talking about it. And in Hollywood, sometimes that's all that matters.

2001

"Temptation Island" (Fox)

When Mandy Lauderdale was a 22-year-old model and agreed to participate in a "dating documentary" with her boyfriend, she was unaware of the show's true premise, even when they were required to undergo all manner of doctor visits.

"We should have known with the STD tests that something was up," she said.

In fact, none of the participating couples knew they would be flown to Belize to an island full of hot single people who - thanks to psychological background checks - producers knew would be especially alluring to each person. The couples were split up and offered these "temptations." On top of shock value, the show was also billed as a, um, helpful way to test if partners were meant to be together. (Contestants Kaya Wittenburg and Valerie Penso-Cuculich, who were together on the show, said people earnestly told them afterward that watching them successfully get through "Temptation Island" inspired them to save their own relationships. They broke up three years later.)

Unexpectedly, the series, another one from Darnell, was a cynical, teachable moment about what audiences want. Carter reported that Fox executives, scarred from "Millionaire," found out during filming that one couple, Taheed Watson and Ytossie Patterson, had a child, which was against the rules of casting. But this time, Carter wrote, they realized if they simply incorporated the controversy, it could work for them, so they filmed a producer informing the unhappy couple they were kicked off the show. If there was any doubt about leaning into drama, it was cleared up when that episode was a ratings bonanza.

The incident also became an example of real-life consequences of such actions: Watson and Patterson sued Fox for defamation of character. Now, Patterson says the experience "kind of ruined me." She added she felt blindsided and would have never participated if she knew what the series was really about. She remains unimpressed with the genre.

"I cannot bring myself to watch any reality shows," she said.

2002

"The Bachelor" (ABC)

If watching "The Bachelor" makes you feel ill, that's fitting: Creator Mike Fleiss told Vanity Fair that a vision for the show appeared in his head when he had a 104-degree temperature. Yet no matter how degrading it is to watch dozens of adults fight to marry a person they have known for approximately two months, this 18-year franchise remains unstoppable. It's one of the few shows that still command a live TV viewing audience, and has launched a cottage industry of Instagram influencers.

More than any other dating show, experts say, the longevity of "The Bachelor" explains why this genre persists: It expertly taps into the very real need for love and how to find it. Even if you know that producers edit any kind of drama they want, and contestants only are there to (shudder) "build their brand," viewers subconsciously soak in lessons about relationships that apply to their lives.

"We would be lying if we didn't tell ourselves that watching these shows ... affects us in how we think about dating," said Natasha Scott, co-host of the podcast "2 Black Girls, 1 Rose." She pointed to "Bachelorette" star Hannah Brown being "gaslit" by manipulative suitor Luke Parker, a story that "resonated with a lot of young women across America."

This makes the embarrassing record of diversity on the franchise - which only recently cast Matt James as the first Black "Bachelor" after fan pressure - even more disappointing, Scott said, and reinforces the damaging idea of who our culture deems worthy of love and extravagant romance. "With that power, [the show] has not taken much responsibility in trying to show different representations of love," she said. "It continually operates in a formulaic fashion in terms of whose stories get highlighted and whose stories are told."

2003

"Joe Millionaire" (Fox)

The age of misinformation got a head start in 2003 when 20 women were told they were competing for the love of Evan Marriott, heir to a $50 million fortune - who was actually a construction worker making $19,000 a year. Around 40 million people tuned into the finale, eager to see Marriott reveal the truth and if a woman would run away screaming from a poor person.

In the end, it was basically fine (Marriott and winner Zora Andrich were awarded a $1 million check to split for their troubles and broke up shortly after), but the premise set a precedent for TV creators: People would believe what you told them to believe, leading to other bleak attempts such as "I Wanna Marry Harry."

Showrunner Liz Bronstein is still stunned by how the show blew up, parodied everywhere from the pages of the New Yorker to a "Saturday Night Live" sketch. Though she's proud it became a pop culture phenomenon, it made her realize she wasn't cut out for the reality dating genre. "I didn't want to spend my career lying to people and tricking them," she said. Marriott has also expressed regret about participating. He has dropped out of the public eye, but Bronstein said she heard from him a few years ago. "He called me and pitched me a show about how reality TV shows had ruined the lives of people who had gone on them."

2004

"Playing It Straight" (Fox)

Describing this show in 2020 will only result in one reaction: shock that it aired on TV. Five straight men and nine gay men pretending to be straight competed for one woman's affection. In the end, if the woman chose a straight man to date, they would each receive $500,000. If she chose a gay man, he would win $1 million and she would win nothing.

The series originated in the U.K. before it was sold to Fox, and executive producer Adam Wood said they envisioned it as a "slightly absurd" twist on "The Bachelor." Obviously, it did not go over well in America and was canceled after three episodes. The U.K. version had high ratings, though in the end, the woman chose a gay man who felt so guilty he offered to split the prize money anyway. "It felt darker than we had imagined," Wood acknowledged. "I don't think we had thought that far ahead."

U.S. contestant Bill Bouvier said that, in theory, he thought the show would be an opportunity to break down stereotypes on TV of how a gay man should look and act. In practice, he said, the experience was "absolutely horrendous." By pretending to be straight, he felt like he was "thrust back into the closet" all over again. Today, he's still troubled by shows that make jokes out of marriage.

"You can have people who don't know each other get married, or make it a game, but two gay men is 'destroying the sanctity of marriage,' " he said. "It's such a slap in the face where they've taken it."

2005

"Next" (MTV)

"'Next' was literally Tinder before Tinder. But instead of swiping left, you got kicked off a bus."

That explanation from D Renard Young, president and executive producer at That Rockz! content studio, makes perfect sense to any millennial who came home from school and watched people reject each other on MTV. A guy or girl would go on individual dates with a group of suitors sitting on a bus. At any point, if they didn't like how the date was going, they could yell "NEXT!" and the next person would walk out of the bus and take their shot.

While it featured a diverse group of daters (and was one of the first dating shows to cast LGBTQ contestants), Young also called it "popcorn voyeurism at its best." People were instantly "next-ed" for a variety of reasons: too boring, not tall enough, hideous shirt. It was a haunting preview of life on dating apps and normalized the idea of nixing a potential partner instantaneously.

"If you're single, even the most bizarre dating show can provide a sense of comfort and hope, because many viewers have been there," Young said. "Or, it can serve as a cautionary tale for what not to do."

2006

"Flavor of Love" (VH1)

Relaxing in a limo with his signature giant clock hanging around his neck, rapper Flavor Flav explained why he agreed to star on a reality dating show. "I've got fame and fortune, I've got real valuable works of art, I've got a mad domestic staff, I've got a nice big mansion," he told the cameras during the premiere. "But none of these things mean nothing without a woman to spend it with."

The Public Enemy hype man was one of the first celebrities to realize a dating show could boost your profile, alongside the likes of Christopher Knight on "My Fair Brady" and "Scott Baio is 45...and Single." But as "Flavor of Love" skyrocketed in the ratings, and was one of the rare shows that didn't have a majority-White cast, many slammed it for trafficking in stereotypes about Black women. Contestants were shown screaming, fighting and performing demeaning challenges. (In one of the most famous scenes, Tiffany "New York" Pollard lunged at Brooke "Pumkin" Thompson after Thompson spit on her.) Some said the series positioned Flav and the cast's antics as a modern-day minstrel show.

"The problem isn't Flavor Flav," said Mark Anthony Neal, chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University, in a 2006 Washington Post story that explored whether the series should be treated as "camp" or a source of outrage. "The problem is Flavor Flav becomes the stand-in for the one or two Black people you see on TV. And a figure like Flavor Flav takes on more importance than he should."

Nicole "Hoopz" Alexander, who won the first season, said in an interview that she didn't listen to the criticism. And although filming the show was surreal ("When you're inside something, going through the experience, you don't understand it"), it changed her life. She was glad to see a dating show that finally had a diverse cast and recalled Flav referring to himself as "Black-chelor" because, as he correctly predicted, the actual broadcast network "Bachelor" wouldn't cast a Black man as the star anytime soon.

2007

"A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila" (MTV)

Years before Tila Tequila was kicked off "Celebrity Big Brother" for writing a blog post that sympathized with Adolf Hitler, and before she revealed herself as a born-again Christian whose old self was "dead," the model and singer was deemed "the Madonna of Myspace" with 2 million online friends. Thus, she was the perfect fit as MTV's "bisexual bachelorette" on a show in which 16 straight men and 16 lesbians competed to date her. (She later said she was never actually bisexual and just "gay for pay.")

Sherri Williams, an assistant professor of race, media and communication at American University, remembers that instead of the show offering visibility for bisexual people, it "just ended up showing more about the patriarchy than anything else." The male contestants were hypermasculine, she recalls, making it seem like those qualities could override any desire that Tila Tequila might have for a woman.

The danger of this type of programming, she said, is that many people want to write off reality dating shows as garbage, when in fact "all of these shows show where we are as a society - what we value and what we believe." So it's telling when producers sideline anyone who isn't a cisgender, straight, conventionally beautiful White person. Even years later, Williams said, "there's still a lot of fetishizing on these shows."

2008

"Farmer Wants a Wife" (CW)

Ah, the classic attempt to appeal to middle America. Just like "The Simple Life" before it, producers figured they could get mileage out of throwing "big city" women into small-town life. (Contestant Josie Goldberg said she was told she was cast in the "Jewish American Princess" role.) Female participants competed in various obstacles - milking a goat, corralling chickens - and tried to win over a hunky single farmer. As the theme song went, "His land and cattle and chickens abound / but this good ol' boy ain't got no lady around."

The concept seemed bizarre to contestant Krista Krogman, but after she was approached by a casting director at a Miami nightclub, she figured she would give it a shot. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, let's just see what happens," she said she thought at the time. "It's fun, exciting, something different." In the end, not many people watched, though it didn't stop other attempts outside New York or Los Angeles, from "Sweet Home Alabama" to "Alaskan Women Looking for Love." Although this one was billed as "The Bachelor" meets "The Simple Life," turns out audiences really just wanted "The Bachelor."

2009

"Megan Wants a Millionaire" (VH1)

In one of the darkest reality TV stories, this VH1 series was pulled off the air after three episodes when one of the contestants, Ryan Jenkins, was named the suspect in the murder of his ex-wife; days later, he was found dead by apparent suicide.

VH1 quickly canceled the show and one of its spinoffs, "I Love Money 3," which featured Jenkins. It turned out Jenkins had a prior record of domestic violence, which the production company missed in its background check. The situation was "the worst thing to ever happen to me in my career," executive producer Mark Cronin told Entertainment Weekly in a deep dive about the horrifying situation. The whole genre got a serious wake-up call about the critical importance of properly vetting contestants.

Megan Hauserman, the star of the show and a Playboy model who also starred in VH1 shows including "Rock of Love With Bret Michaels" and "Rock of Love: Charm School," was cast as the lead of her own find-a-husband show when she told producers that she didn't want a job but rather yearned to be a trophy wife. After the show was scrapped, she said, her TV career disappeared - no one wanted to touch anyone remotely associated with Jenkins.

"For many, many years, I was depressed by so many different aspects of it: knowing someone involved in that, knowing that a person close to me did that," she said. "I was upset because my show was canceled; every opportunity that I had at that time ended and was canceled."

2010

"Donald J. Trump Presents: The Ultimate Merger" (TV One)

It wasn't just an "Apprentice" reunion when Omarosa Manigault Newman joined President Trump's administration in 2017 as director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison. Back in the day, they extended their lucrative partnership to "The Ultimate Merger," featuring 12 men vying for Omarosa. "I'd love to have you meet some guy. Is there anybody that can tame you?" Trump, an executive producer on the series, asked in the premiere as she laughed. (Oh, if only we could have seen a glimpse of what the future held for the two of them.)

Executive producer D Renard Young said that though he figured people would tune in because Omarosa was so polarizing, even he was surprised by the high ratings. He knew her earlier persona as the villain on "The Apprentice" franchise was criticized as perpetuating the "angry Black woman" stereotype, which they worked hard to avoid.

"That's the beauty of having creatives and executives of color making decisions behind the scenes, such as myself, as we didn't manipulate situations in the edit to portray stereotypes that continue to plague Black women," he said. "We allowed Omarosa the space to express her full range of emotions."

Young is proud that the cast had "smart, funny, Black men represented on reality television. ... Before this show, we were always shown in a different light in this genre." A scene when Omarosa got in the hot tub with her suitors was especially memorable. "It was refreshing and rare to see an African American woman as the object of affection, desire and attention," he said, adding, "If Black Twitter was popping in 2010, it would've birthed many memes."

2011

"Love in the Wild" (NBC)

You know how you can get a glimpse of someone's true personality by how they react when they get lost while driving? That was the basic idea behind "Love in the Wild," except instead of a wrong turn on the highway, producers matched up random single people, sent them to navigate a Costa Rican jungle, and had them forge through quicksand or brave crocodile-infested rivers.

"We wanted to see, if people had to work together, would it bring them close together quickly?" said executive producer Tom Shelly, who also worked on "Survivor." "We were really hoping to get real relationships out of it."

Turns out when you base the premise on that type of psychology, it actually works? Five out of the 20 couples over two seasons wound up married - an impressive batting average for a genre that has a low success rate. Season 1 winner Samantha Spiro confirmed it that was not the way she expected to meet her husband, but, well, life is full of surprises. She and Mike Spiro tied the knot three years after the finale.

"Those high-pressure situations made us feel close to each other really fast," she said. "Being in that situation with no cellphones, no distractions, nothing else besides human contact - it was just us all the time."

2012

"The Choice" (Fox)

"The Choice" was like "The Voice" except for dating instead of singing: A group of celebrities, for some reason, signed up to sit on swivel chairs and listen to men or women describe themselves. If they liked what they heard in these "blind auditions," they turned around. The show was truly as ridiculous as it sounded, and shocked us because it showed that famous folks who had many other means of dating - including Joe Jonas, Carmen Electra and Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino - still turned to TV. The "dating show" remained a powerful platform.

Of course, no one took it too seriously. At the beginning of each episode, producers aired a recap of what happened when a celebrity went on a date with the person of their choosing. Results varied from "texting ever since" to "better off as friends" to "promised to keep in touch" (we know what that means).

2013

"Ready for Love" (NBC)

One question that plagues observers of these shows: Why would anyone sign up to be on them?! With all the evidence that they didn't work and/or were a source of potential public humiliation, "Ready for Love" was proof that even 13 years in, the urge remained strong to look for a soul mate on television.

Ben Patton knew the drill; he had even once declined a chance to be considered for "The Bachelor." But a producer for "Ready for Love" made an intriguing sales pitch: Patton would be one of three bachelors, with zero pressure to get engaged, and women would be chosen by professional matchmakers. Patton considered this. He had been out of the dating world while working abroad. So, he thought, why not?

"Ready for Love" only lasted a few episodes, and drew unfavorable "Hunger Games" comparisons as women were "presented" to the men onstage with a live audience. Patton said even though he didn't find his future wife (he and the woman he chose broke up), it gave him a new understanding of why people reveal so much of themselves on TV.

"The camera is an uncomfortable element for about two weeks, max," he said. "Then you end up becoming friends with sound guys, camera guys ... when you build that rapport, you forget they're a voyeur."

2014

"Married at First Sight" (FYI/Lifetime)

When "Married at First Sight" started casting, producers weren't sure anyone would sign up. After all, you had to agree to be set up with a stranger by a panel of experts and then instantly marry whoever they chose. Buyers were hugely skeptical, but eventually it landed on the FYI cable channel. The debut sparked even more stunned reactions and mockery as viewers tried to process what they were seeing.

Yet, once again - you may be sensing a theme here - everyone underestimated people's desire to find a partner, especially when 14 years of reality dating shows had desensitized them. Fast forward, and the series - a bona fide hit which has since moved to Lifetime and just launched its 11th season - has produced nine married couples. "It's a show that celebrates love, at its core, and people who are willing to do one of the craziest things you can imagine doing, legally, in hopes of finding love," said Chris Coelen, chief executive of production company Kinetic Content.

Iris Caldwell was a loyal fan of the series and applied as soon as she learned the show was filming its ninth season in Charlotte. Her story line drew plenty of headlines (she revealed that she was a virgin) and she wound up breaking it off with husband Keith Manley, but she regrets nothing and says she's "still a huge hopeless romantic." She credits the show's popularity to viewers who watch and relate: "We're going through similar situations - rejection, love, getting to know someone," she said. "This is just a public way of doing it."

2015

"Everlasting" via "UnREAL" (Lifetime)

Yes, obviously "UnREAL" was a scripted drama that went behind the scenes of a fictional dating show, "Everlasting." Yet it was jarring to see "Everlasting" producers pull out every sick, dirty trick to manipulate cast members into having mental breakdowns - especially when you consider that co-creator Sarah Gertrude Shapiro worked for three years on "The Bachelor," so she was drawing real-life inspiration from somewhere. (Shapiro told the New Yorker that her "Bachelor" bosses would order her to make contestants cry on camera or she would be fired.)

The drama series took a nosedive after the first season, partially due to a much-criticized police brutality story line in which a White producer called the cops on the show's first Black star. And plenty of people were unnerved by what they saw with an apparent peek behind the curtain. Still, it didn't stop them from watching "The Bachelor" in real life.

2016

"Catching Kelce" (E!)

Maya Benberry didn't pack too many clothes when she was cast on a mysterious athlete's dating show. "I just really honestly went into it like, 'I'm a Black girl, this is probably a White guy, and I'm probably only going to be there like a week or two,'" she told The Washington Post's Amber Ferguson.

The series wound up starring sometimes controversial NFL star Travis Kelce, whose goofy nature off the field made him a natural for this kind of role. Benberry couldn't believe it when she and Kelce clicked and he chose her at the end. However, when filming was over, Benberry said Kelce told her the producers wanted to redo the story line to make her the villain, because they liked the idea of the villain winning the show.

The result was a nightmare: She was portrayed in a "negative, villainous, angry Black women type of way," she said, and received racist comments and death threats online - an issue that remains a disturbingly common experience for reality contestants of color. She and Kelce broke up; she didn't feel like he, the network or producers supported her. (Kelce and the producers did not respond to a request for comment; no one who worked at E! when the show aired could be reached for comment.)

In editing her as the villain, Benberry said, they also didn't show Kelce expressing how much he liked her. That way "the audience would think that I wasn't going to win, and that I was just some evil, bitter girl, when in reality I wasn't. So that was unfortunate. I felt like it kind of made the experience, for me, not as fun."

2017

"RelationShipped" (Facebook Watch)

Is there anything more dystopian than clicking on a button and controlling the fate of another person? Probably not, and it was clearly only a matter of time before dating shows tried this out. BuzzFeed made the attempt with "RelationShipped" on the Facebook Watch platform, where viewers could choose the star of the show and future contestants - so basically not too different from fans voicing opinions on celebrity relationships in comments sections, but with actual consequences. Producer Tom Shelly said that contestants "didn't take it too seriously" since the viewers made a lot of decisions but that it created a social experiment - not even so much with drama, but more so with how everyday humans would react to an incredibly surreal situation being foisted upon them.

2018

"The Proposal" (ABC)

While "The Bachelor" and "Bachelorette" remain a mainstay, as well as spin offs such as "Bachelor in Paradise" and "The Bachelor Summer Games," one flop showed that fans wouldn't watch everything from creator Mike Fleiss. (He declined to comment for this story.) "The Proposal" was essentially a pageant similar to "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?," which didn't grab this decade's audience. Plus, it was yet another lesson in faulty background checks: The network had to pull an episode when one of the contestants was accused of past sexual assault as the show started airing.

"How are we supposed to find out about something that's never been reported???" Fleiss tweeted. "For the record," he added, "I am horrified that any of these abusive a--holes are on our shows. We are working very hard to find ways to do better."

2019

"Love Island" (CBS)

The U.K. viewing audience went bananas over this controversial show - producers sequestered hot singles in a Mallorca villa and let chaos ensue - after it debuted in 2015. Naturally, America wanted a piece. Set in Fiji, the CBS version didn't garner anywhere close to the amount of attention it did in the U.K., but it pleased the network enough that it ordered another season, presumably to capture young viewers. ITV Entertainment's Simon Thomas, who executive-produced the U.S. version, said he thinks that contrary to popular belief, crazy drama isn't always necessary to entice fans.

"My favorite 'Love Island' moments are miscommunications, or little 'he said she saids,' where what appeared to be a rock-solid relationship in the morning unravels by the evening," he said. "You don't need people throwing champagne glasses at each other - that's not real life."

Kate Casey, host of the "Reality Life With Kate Casey" podcast, said a major reason these shows catch on is because of the communal viewing experience, especially on a series like "Love Island" that airs daily. "I think you can't forget that it's also just a supremely satisfying television-watching experience," she said. "You can chat with your friends and make fun of [contestants] or root for them. It's a fantastic escape from our crazy world."

2020

"Love Is Blind" (Netflix)

After years of drilling unattainable beauty norms into our heads, Hollywood has occasionally tried to backtrack and teach us that attraction can be more than a physical connection. "Mr. Personality" made men cover their faces with creepy masks. "Dating in the Dark" was exactly what it sounded like. Neither lasted many episodes.

The breakthrough was Netflix's hit "Love Is Blind," a fitting culmination of two decades of reality dating shows. The wacky idea (people start out dating in pods where they can't see each other, although it no longer sounds that crazy in a covid-19 world) at least tried to be progressive by focusing on emotional connection first ... even if it had a viral scene of a contestant giving wine to her dog.

Creator Chris Coelen said he saw criticism along the lines of "this show is the final nail in the final coffin of humanity." A review from the Guardian said as much, adding it was "absurd, revolting, endearing, toxic and wholesome by turns - and addictive as hell throughout." "Sure, I guess you can look at it that way," Coelen said. "But to me, that's not why I created it or why it resonated. I think it resonated because it's relatable. We all want to feel like, hey, we should be loved for who we are."

Williams, the American University professor, said she sees the "Love Is Blind" popularity as a sign that while audiences will never tire of these shows, they will get oversaturated with endless "Bachelor" variations that showcase women seeking fairy-tale fantasies that do not exist. But she sees potential with series such as MTV's "Are You the One?," which featured a sexually fluid cast; or "Labor of Love," which, while it had ridiculous elements, actually starred a woman in her 40s who wanted to have a baby, with or without a husband.

"As we see this genre aging more, people are running out of ideas," she said. "But the ones that are more real and more inclusive are starting to germinate and really rise to the top."

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The revealing and disturbing story of America, told through 20 years of reality dating shows

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If you are looking for the exact moment when American culture went off the rails that it has never managed to climb back on, may we offer a singular scene on television from Feb. 15, 2000: a man in a tuxedo, bent down on one knee, proposing to a total stranger in a wedding gown.

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Way too ‘Extreme’: Trashy reality shows’ comeback makes TV revolting again

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From “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” to “The Biggest Loser” to “Supernanny,” early 2000s reality TV is making a comeback that is trashier than ever.