Geronimo : What if Osama Bin Laden was killed prior to 9/11?
- Thread starter Iwanh
- Start date
Part 81: Paralyzer - Culture 2007
Part LXXXI
Paralyzer
VIDEO GAMES
2007, saw a string of refreshing new additions to old franchises, Halo 3, God of War 2, and a new addition to the Call of Duty Franchise with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The game broke away from the traditional World War II setting of previous entries and instead was set in modern times.
Other major games of the year included originals like BioShock, Super Mario Galaxy, and the epic space opera Mass Effect a single-player role-playing game, a game that divided players while simultaneously challenging the perception of video games from a critical standpoint.
2007 Video Games
THE INTERNET
Throughout 2007, the internet continued to grow until it consumed more than 97% of telecommunication information, eclipsing any of the 90’s era predictions that the medium simply wouldn’t catch on. And with that vast expansion came a wellspring of new properties, avenues for entertainment, and as is human nature, controversy.
One of these platforms was Twittr, a kind of ‘microblogging site’ created by a small group of undergrad students. The site allowed people to post short ‘Tweets’ in 140 characters or less and quickly began to accrue attention from users who saw it as a much lower stakes, and a less personal platform than the dominant MySpace. Quickly being adopted by the tech-savvy community. With “Are you on Twittr?” turning into a common refrain at the time.
The internet boom of the mid to late 2000s saw the rise of video-sharing platforms. Prominently WebTube, but all that turned sour in late 2006 and 2007, as a number of television and music studios began to launch lawsuits against the company for breach of copyright. In reaction WebTube began restricting uploads trying to crack down on illegal content, toying with a short-lived ‘verified’ system that would allow only known and trusted creators to post unrestricted videos. While most would only be able to share videos amongst friends, this heavily choked the company’s growth potential, and when further rounds of funding came up short the expensive venture of video hosting came to a halt in August 2007 when WebTube announced the servers were going offline, giving everyone who posted an opportunity to retrieve their own content before the site went down permanently. This created by some metrics, the largest ever source of ‘lost content’ when millions of hours of posted videos ceased to be August 31st, 2007.
However WebTube’s downfall was only the beginning, it was a flawed design but had proven to other companies that there was indeed a strong and potentially lucrative market for online video hosting. It just required a stronger business model that wouldn’t clash so violently with copyright law, perhaps by working in partnership with already existing Movie, Television, and Music studios. This idea was leaped upon by large companies like Google, Viacom, and NBCUniversal who unveiled their own, less unrestricted video-hosting services that would seek to work within copyright law by partnering with different studios for advertising and clip-sharing deals.
In the midst of the video-sharing gold rush in the wake of WebTube, a number of small creators began to create and maintain their own separate video sites, just like major studios were attempting to do. Internet creators like the Nostalgia-Critic on Thatguywiththeglasses.com . TheVlogbrothers on Nerdfighteria.com and TheGregoryBrothers on Schmoyoho and iJustine and many others who were successful enough to enter into private advertising contracts, and build separate self-sustaining ventures, away from the major platforms, at least while the landscape continued to shift so much.
(Left to Right) Logo of Twittr, Time Magazine detailing the collapse of WebTube, The Nostalgia Critic
LITERATURE
2007 witnessed the literary conclusion to the biggest book series in living memory, and depending on how you count it THE BIGGEST. With the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, tens of thousands of ‘Potter Heads’ crammed into bookstores worldwide to read J.K. Rowling's final addition to the Wizarding World. A finale that in the words of both critics and fans lived well up to its promise and became the best-selling novel sold within 24 hours. The book series was credited with almost single-handedly raising young people's interest in reading, and earned the author global merit and acclaim, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom, despite allegations from the Christian right that the books encouraged ‘Witchcraft’.
Of the other books released in 2007 aside from Harry Potter, The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin offered an insider look into the Supreme Court of the United States and the ideological schism that had emerged between the Chief Justice and the Conservative minority, a division Toobin described as “A threat to years of dead even consensus we have been used to, though it is not the ‘activist court’ Republicans paint it to be, the Sullivan Court promises to be much more prominent than we have gotten used to”, returning to fiction there was another addition to Stephanie Meyers Starlight saga with Red Sun. The novel Vogul a fictionalized narrative about the eponymous Eduard Vogel and the search for his missing expedition. These books captured different audiences but both spent equal amounts of time on the best-selling list.
(Left to Right) 2007 Books, Red Sun, Harry Potter, The Nine, Vogul
TECHNOLOGY
By far, the biggest leap forward in technology came in the mobile phone industry, when the industry began to fully embrace the idea of ‘touch screen’ technology and move away from physical keyboards and keypads. This evolution was embraced fully by Apple Computers, and its CEO and acclaimed visionary Steve Jobs who unveiled the iPhone on stage at a Macworld Conference, a device which he said was a combination of three devices an “iPod”, “Mobile Phone” and “Internet Communicator”
The product had been a labor of love for Jobs and received widespread fanfare and press attention. But it was not a perfect product, some saw it as a gimmick loaded with flashy features, and others remained skeptical that consumers would feel comfortable wholly abandoning buttons and stylus, LIM’s Blackberry rejected that idea out of hand “People like keyboards, they’re precise and always work”, but other companies in the mobile phone market were not to be caught flat-footed, and worked desperately to catch up to the iPhones release date.
The product had been enormously hyped, and according to legend, a $100 million dollar marketing budget galvanized public interest in the product to the most extreme heights. Roughly 6/10 Americans said they knew about the iPhone, and thousands of fans lurked outside retail stores on the day's launch, with police sent to protect stores for fear of burglaries.
And then it was released, to disappointing reviews.
There were many criticisms of the iPhone, attributed to a rushed development deadline, failure to acquire a sweetheart deal with telecom giant AT&T, and Job's resistance to sacrificing complete creative control over the product. This forced the phone to pivot to a multi-carrier device. Stories of Jobs the vicious and overbearing taskmaster, who would arbitrarily pull design ideas, overrule his staff, and overpromise in public. “YOU CALL THIS THE PHONE OF THE FUTURE!?” was the refrain written up in a particularly fiery investigation in the Wall Street Journal.
The touchscreen technology was arguably the best working feature on the device and even it was aggressively buggy (so buggy that when Jobs floggeded the product on stage he was actually wielding a dummy product that was entirely pre-programmed). Even more buggy were the “Mobile Phone” and “Internet Communicator” elements of the device. Promised features like voice messaging, ‘high-speed internet’, and video downloads were missing, the slick Apple design was ever-present but its operating system was largely judged by reviewers as obtuse and hard to understand. The high price point topping $550 dollars was off-putting to general audiences, and the glass screens were prone to shattering.
It was an expensive and disappointing flop. From a review from businessman Mark Cuban written 2 weeks after the release.
Sales were still strong, though the post-release drubbing blunted its potential, especially outside of the United States where enthusiasm was greatly dampened, leading to harsh price drops. The iPhone’s poor initial performance was not its death knell, and its key touch screen feature still proved a big draw for buyers and pushed other mobile phone companies like Blackberry, Palm, Android, and LG to push forward into a touch screen era, hopefully to better results.
(Left to Right Above) Steve Jobs Unveils The iPhone and a Purchaser
(Left to Right Below) New Yorker Covers Covering the Evolution of Mobile Phones
MOVIES
It was another blockbuster year for blockbuster movies, topping the previous and fully rejuvenating the financially lagging film industry. With plenty of big films that captured the attention and the wallets of general audiences, especially with more additions to franchise films (which were becoming a key pillar of the industry), like Pirates of the Caribbean, another Harry Potter Film, and a 3rd installment to the Sony, Sam Raimi helmed Spider-Man Series.
(Left to Right) Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Spider-Man 3
Other than Spider-Man 3, the year turned out to be rather dry for the genre, with only the second Fantastic 4 Movie which largely flopped to audiences, however to those who were paying close attention, plenty of news continued to drip out on the production of Marvel Studio’s independently financed Captain America movie.
Two comic/novel book adaptations did both finally manage to reach the big screen, Daran Aronofsky’s Watchman and adaption of Allan Moor’s comic of the same name and Terry Gilliam's long-suffering Good Omens both to mixed reviews and middling box office returns, the films appealed to fans of the source material, both considered unadaptable for the big screen and in the eyes of some critics and general audiences, perhaps they should have stayed that way. Another comic adaption came to film, this time by Zach Snyder, and unlike the previous was much more successful in terms of the box office Ronin
One of the year's unexpected hits (especially when taking into account the thrashing it received from the critics) was the Michael Bay, Power Rangers Movie.
(Left to Right) Good Omens, Watchmen, Ronin, Power Rangers
Michael Bay’s Box Office Juggernaut notwithstanding, plenty of creative and more mature cinema did emerge in 2007. Including the two biggest award winners No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, both of which were showered with awards as well as the historical epic Saladin featuring Sean Connery as the eponymous Saladin, a piece of cross-racial casting that caused a minor uproar for critics, with some calling it blackface while the director defended the casting and Sean as the “perfect man to play the role in a virtuoso performance” Which satisfied the academy as it granted him the Best Actor Award.
In the animation department, the conclusion to the Cartoon Network, Samurai Jack TV Show. The Samurai Jack film was a darker and much more mature conclusion than many fans expected, which caused a small outcry by parents groups who took their parents to see the film. From Pixar, the first film being released in coordination with Sony Studios Ratatouille. The departure of Pixar from the Disney family, had an immediate effect especially in its theme parks as the Pixar characters were phased out and Pixar began work, but even without Disney’s marketing magic, the film was very well received and financially successful further underscoring what some saw as competing visions for both studios, especially as Disney’s own animated film Meet the Robinsons had an underwhelming reception. And contributed to Comcast's decision to revamp Disney’s internal, more traditional animation houses, initiating production on The Princess and the Frog and Bolt, compared to Pixar which forged a new relationship with Sony Studios.
A number of other big films were released in 2007 films like I Am Legend, an action film that featured a vampire hunting Will Smith, The horror movie Geralds Game a Stephen King Adaption and the Documentary Sicko, by Michael Moore which was a thorough investigation into the failure of the United States to pass healthcare reform, including secret camera footage of legislators from the legislative battle this year as the crew posed as healthcare lobbyists to gain insider access and embarrass Washington D.C. ending in another excoriation by the filmmaker at the 2008 Oscars.
(Left to Right) Sean Connery Wins Best Actor, Samurai Jack, Pixar Mascots Leave Disney World, Geralds Game, Sicko
BUSINESS & THE ECONOMY
The big news story of the business world was undoubtedly the mortgage market downturn. For years, there had been a debate in the insurance industry about the value of the American homeowner market, was it a large bubble? Or was it simply overvalued? Most had been pricing in a market correction for years, but by the fall of 2007, it was becoming clear, just how uncertain the future of the housing market (what many analysts see as traditionally one of the safest and bedrock markets in the economy) was.
Elsewhere in the world of business, one curios story that continued to unfold in downtown Chicago was the ongoing construction of the Trump Spire, which was supposed to be the tallest building in the world. The development ran headlong into opposition both from members of the public, and local politicians including mayor Richard M. Daley, who was at the helm of the powerful Chicago machine, who supported local pressure groups who both wanted to protect the Chicago skyline from advertising and certain groups who didn’t want the cities historic Sears Tower to be overshadowed by the Spire.
Throughout the political fight, Trump refused to cede to the groups insisting that “Chicago will have the tallest and most beautiful building in the world, because frankly if it isn’t Chicago, it will be the Arabs or the Japanese, but we don’t want that” And recruited support for the project from the likes of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich who was similarly no stranger to foul mouth politics. “Our city needs to dream, and when we dream, we don’t just dream big, we dream the biggest”.
(Left to Right) Mortgage Crisis, DonaldTrump, and Illinois Governor BlagojevichTV
2007 was another banner year for television, first for endings, specifically for two long-running series, the Sopranos and The West Wing. The long-running HBO crime drama The Sopranos went out on an explosive finale, that was lauded by its fans as the payoff they always wanted, to a show that had redefined what scripted television drama was supposed to be.
The final season of the show put the titular crime family into all-out war with its New Jersey and New York rivals, a battle that Tony realizes he couldn't win. He turns a rat before the rival organizations can destroy him and his family. This decision successfully places his surviving family into state witnesses, but one that finally ends his life when he is gunned down by his long-time associate Christopher Moltisanti, though widely praised critics claimed the series lost much of its intrigue pathos in favor of a more generic action-centric ending for televisions favorite crime boss a decision defended by the Soprano’s creator David Chase “I always knew how I was gonna end it, these mobsters live fundamentally boring lives, that are usually cut violently short, what else really could happen”.
The West Wing also had its finale, a two-part season as President Owens faced down a myriad of scandals, and eventually an impeachment trial over allegations over leaked national security documents. The trial threatens to bring the whole administration down as votes line up to convict the President, however, the case against him unravels when a key piece of evidence, a recorded conversation is found to be entirely doctored. However, Owens reveals to his wife that he did in fact order the leak. Part 2 of the season, acting essentially as the show’s final goodbye, after the death of former President Bartlett, brings the temperature down in Washington and allows for a full cast reunion.
But 2007 also served as a year for new shows, to replace the drams that left, most prominently Mad Men on ABC, a television show about Advertising Executives in New York City in 1980 and its protagonist/antihero Daniel Draper. Another show on Showtime was The House Winsor which was a television show that offered a scandalous and at times historically inaccurate look into the British Royal family from the perspective of a multi-seasonal biopic. Both shows attracted high viewership and continued to solidify television as a celebrated medium for long-form storytelling, rather than its traditional episodic roots.
The specter of a writer's strike hung in the air throughout 2007, only to be averted by negotiators, which prevented a potentially disastrous impact on the television industry, for instance in fear of a strike, many production companies sought to develop more reality television shows as a cheap way to insulate themselves from future strikes and only spurned them to further invest into various streaming platforms to make up the cost of the new residual agreement and drop in the home market.
(Left to Right) The Sopranos, The West Wing, Mad Men, The Windsors
EVENTS & MUSIC
2007 was also a year for big events, and notably one disastrous one. The 2007 Superbowl, was supposed to be a spectacle, but it turned into a disaster of epic proportions. First, the NFL upset its fans by cracking down on “copyright infringement” essentially banning the word Super Bowl from appearing at any Super Bowl event, that wasn’t sponsored by the NFL. This decision led to massive backlash from practically every Church, Bar, and Casual Business in the country that rebranded to “Big Game” parties, leading to the mocking rebranding of the NFL to be the No-Fun-League.
Then the game itself became rained out for the first time ever, and a power outage made the Prince Half-Time Show unwatchable for the 100+ million viewers at home. The expensive advertisements were also subject to scrutiny both for the inclusion and mockery of homosexuality. And on top of that, the game was hopelessly one-sided, when the Colts beat the Saints in a 46-10 blowout.
2007 was a year when the term ‘Culture War’ roared to life once again, specifically over the hot-button issue of Gay rights and specifically the right to marriage, as more American states, jurisdictions, and even the Supreme Court grappled with the issue, but it wasn’t the only cultural touchstone, so was the breakdown of America’s favorite stars and starlets.
Starting with the arrest of major celebrities like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears who were all arrested for some form of public intoxication. The British Singer Songwriter Amy Winehouse fresh off the success of her best-selling album suffered a public breakdown that ended in her being placed in a rehabilitation center. And perhaps the biggest PR disaster of all was the biggest celebrity story. The epic unraveling of the Queen of Pop, Madonna, ended in the postponing and cancellation of the Confessions Tour which was already sold out in many cities and billed as the biggest tour in the world.
Madonna’s disaster of a year, emerged in an era of 24-hour news but also dedicated social media websites and ‘reporters’ to following and detailing the meltdown, especially when combined with the deluge of comedy, think pieces, and commentary on the slow-motion car crash. An internet economy that generated its own pro-Madonna counterculture, and was according to analytics the most clicked story of 2007, above even the NASA Atlantis Disaster in terms of total volume of headlines for the year.
As the world of music was upended by the trials and tribulations of Madonna, there was still some daylight for new and popular music to emerge. Especially as the internet music market continued to shift under the industry’s feet.
Bands like Radiohead, shook the industry by releasing music entirely online via their own websites, which according to the band allowed them to break a sales barrier they had never managed to do before and ignore record labels, a method that was followed by other major artists like The Police and Rage Against the Machine who reunited to release online albums., claiming that the cost of distribution was the lowest it had ever been for music production.
Most Popular Music of 2007
(Left to Right Above) Prince Half-Time Show, Pride Flag in Washington, Celebrity Mugshots
(Left to Right Below) Amy Winehouse, Maddonah Expose Magazine, Radiohead
Paralyzer
VIDEO GAMES
2007, saw a string of refreshing new additions to old franchises, Halo 3, God of War 2, and a new addition to the Call of Duty Franchise with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The game broke away from the traditional World War II setting of previous entries and instead was set in modern times.
| IMDB - Plot Summary of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
The Call of Duty series returns this time in a modern-day setting, The player takes control of the main character “Soap”. – The Year is 2011, and a war has broken out in the Middle East, between the New Allied Powers comprised of the United States, Great Britain, and The Russian Federation and the monstrous Arab dictator Alwaz Massad who is threatening to deploy nuclear weapons against his enemies should they make good on the threat to invade his nation, over his support for terrorism. The player takes a lead role in three separate special operation teams of the SAS, the Green Berets, and Spetsnaz forces, working both on the front lines and deep within enemy territory to assist the invasion.
However, troubles arise when Massad’s nuclear threats previously considered pure bluster are proven horrifically accurate when he launches his threatened nuclear attack against British forces, and sleeper cells of his agents are activated and attack NAP cities. As Massad threatens to launch a full-scale nuclear strike on the allied powers, Soap and his comrades must succeed in halting the attack permanently and bringing Massad to justice.
The year also saw a number of original games by the production company Valve. Notably, the game bundle The Orange Box which included the puzzle game Portal, the multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2, and the 3 episodic installments of the puzzle shooter Half-Life 2, which were bundled together. All were received with very warm praise by their respective fanbases and critics in general, for innovative gameplay and humorous and creative diversity.Other major games of the year included originals like BioShock, Super Mario Galaxy, and the epic space opera Mass Effect a single-player role-playing game, a game that divided players while simultaneously challenging the perception of video games from a critical standpoint.
Mass Effect is an ambitious title with a superb narrative, but …
The Gaming community is firmly divided on BioWare’s recent space epic Mass Effect, and that is precisely due to its groundbreaking, unmatched storytelling. Building a narrative so riveting, so dense and diverse, that it successfully disguises the game's biggest drawback, the gameplay.
This game is a rich and ambitious space-faring adventure, following Captain Isaac as he deals with other races, religious organizations, and alien governments, as you try to rally your plucky band of rebels against the Imperial Armada. A truly impressive level of detail is laid upon these cultures, but for many (including myself) The first 8 hours, completely went over my head as I struggled with janky combat and a borderline dysfunctional camera and movement system (I mean seriously was I walking through glue!) It’s a slow burn and one that tragically burnt out too many before they could get hooked into the majestic storytelling.
2007 Video Games
THE INTERNET
Throughout 2007, the internet continued to grow until it consumed more than 97% of telecommunication information, eclipsing any of the 90’s era predictions that the medium simply wouldn’t catch on. And with that vast expansion came a wellspring of new properties, avenues for entertainment, and as is human nature, controversy.
One of these platforms was Twittr, a kind of ‘microblogging site’ created by a small group of undergrad students. The site allowed people to post short ‘Tweets’ in 140 characters or less and quickly began to accrue attention from users who saw it as a much lower stakes, and a less personal platform than the dominant MySpace. Quickly being adopted by the tech-savvy community. With “Are you on Twittr?” turning into a common refrain at the time.
The internet boom of the mid to late 2000s saw the rise of video-sharing platforms. Prominently WebTube, but all that turned sour in late 2006 and 2007, as a number of television and music studios began to launch lawsuits against the company for breach of copyright. In reaction WebTube began restricting uploads trying to crack down on illegal content, toying with a short-lived ‘verified’ system that would allow only known and trusted creators to post unrestricted videos. While most would only be able to share videos amongst friends, this heavily choked the company’s growth potential, and when further rounds of funding came up short the expensive venture of video hosting came to a halt in August 2007 when WebTube announced the servers were going offline, giving everyone who posted an opportunity to retrieve their own content before the site went down permanently. This created by some metrics, the largest ever source of ‘lost content’ when millions of hours of posted videos ceased to be August 31st, 2007.
However WebTube’s downfall was only the beginning, it was a flawed design but had proven to other companies that there was indeed a strong and potentially lucrative market for online video hosting. It just required a stronger business model that wouldn’t clash so violently with copyright law, perhaps by working in partnership with already existing Movie, Television, and Music studios. This idea was leaped upon by large companies like Google, Viacom, and NBCUniversal who unveiled their own, less unrestricted video-hosting services that would seek to work within copyright law by partnering with different studios for advertising and clip-sharing deals.
In the midst of the video-sharing gold rush in the wake of WebTube, a number of small creators began to create and maintain their own separate video sites, just like major studios were attempting to do. Internet creators like the Nostalgia-Critic on Thatguywiththeglasses.com . TheVlogbrothers on Nerdfighteria.com and TheGregoryBrothers on Schmoyoho and iJustine and many others who were successful enough to enter into private advertising contracts, and build separate self-sustaining ventures, away from the major platforms, at least while the landscape continued to shift so much.
(Left to Right) Logo of Twittr, Time Magazine detailing the collapse of WebTube, The Nostalgia Critic
LITERATURE
2007 witnessed the literary conclusion to the biggest book series in living memory, and depending on how you count it THE BIGGEST. With the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, tens of thousands of ‘Potter Heads’ crammed into bookstores worldwide to read J.K. Rowling's final addition to the Wizarding World. A finale that in the words of both critics and fans lived well up to its promise and became the best-selling novel sold within 24 hours. The book series was credited with almost single-handedly raising young people's interest in reading, and earned the author global merit and acclaim, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom, despite allegations from the Christian right that the books encouraged ‘Witchcraft’.
The Leaky Cauldron - Interview with JK Rowling After HBP – Part III
Jul 29, 2007
…
MA: Speaking of world events
JKR: Chapter four?
MA: Yeah, chapter four, and current world events, specifically in the last four years. Terrorism and Genocide; has it factored into your writing, has it shaped your writing?
JKR: No, never consciously, in the sense that I’ve never thought, “It’s time for a post-Darfur Harry Potter book,” no. But what Voldemort does, in many senses, is genocidal, and that was quite clear in my mind before Darfur happened. I was going to read last night [ie, do the midnight reading at the castle] from chapter four, covering the Muggle scourge. That was the reading until just a few weeks ago when there was this horrible report [the discovery of more mass graves]. It then became quite clear to me that it was going to be grossly inappropriate for me to read a passage in which they are eavesdropping on the Deatheaters talking about the Muggle disappearances. It just wasn’t appropriate, as there are some touches of levity in there. It was totally inappropriate, so that’s when I had to change, and I decided to go for a more polite story in the woods, a moment of jokiness between, Harry and Hermione and Ron, where they all laugh and joke for what feels like the last time. It all ties together nicely. So no, not consciously, but there are parallels, obviously. I think one of the times I felt the parallels was when I was writing about the destruction of the Ministry I always planned that these kinds of things would happen, but these have very powerful resonances, given that I believe, and many people believe, that there have been instances of persecution of people who did not deserve to be persecuted, even while we’re attempting to find the people who have committed utter atrocities. These things just happen, it’s human nature. There were some very startling parallels at the time I was writing it.
Of the other books released in 2007 aside from Harry Potter, The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin offered an insider look into the Supreme Court of the United States and the ideological schism that had emerged between the Chief Justice and the Conservative minority, a division Toobin described as “A threat to years of dead even consensus we have been used to, though it is not the ‘activist court’ Republicans paint it to be, the Sullivan Court promises to be much more prominent than we have gotten used to”, returning to fiction there was another addition to Stephanie Meyers Starlight saga with Red Sun. The novel Vogul a fictionalized narrative about the eponymous Eduard Vogel and the search for his missing expedition. These books captured different audiences but both spent equal amounts of time on the best-selling list.
(Left to Right) 2007 Books, Red Sun, Harry Potter, The Nine, Vogul
TECHNOLOGY
By far, the biggest leap forward in technology came in the mobile phone industry, when the industry began to fully embrace the idea of ‘touch screen’ technology and move away from physical keyboards and keypads. This evolution was embraced fully by Apple Computers, and its CEO and acclaimed visionary Steve Jobs who unveiled the iPhone on stage at a Macworld Conference, a device which he said was a combination of three devices an “iPod”, “Mobile Phone” and “Internet Communicator”
The product had been a labor of love for Jobs and received widespread fanfare and press attention. But it was not a perfect product, some saw it as a gimmick loaded with flashy features, and others remained skeptical that consumers would feel comfortable wholly abandoning buttons and stylus, LIM’s Blackberry rejected that idea out of hand “People like keyboards, they’re precise and always work”, but other companies in the mobile phone market were not to be caught flat-footed, and worked desperately to catch up to the iPhones release date.
The product had been enormously hyped, and according to legend, a $100 million dollar marketing budget galvanized public interest in the product to the most extreme heights. Roughly 6/10 Americans said they knew about the iPhone, and thousands of fans lurked outside retail stores on the day's launch, with police sent to protect stores for fear of burglaries.
And then it was released, to disappointing reviews.
There were many criticisms of the iPhone, attributed to a rushed development deadline, failure to acquire a sweetheart deal with telecom giant AT&T, and Job's resistance to sacrificing complete creative control over the product. This forced the phone to pivot to a multi-carrier device. Stories of Jobs the vicious and overbearing taskmaster, who would arbitrarily pull design ideas, overrule his staff, and overpromise in public. “YOU CALL THIS THE PHONE OF THE FUTURE!?” was the refrain written up in a particularly fiery investigation in the Wall Street Journal.
The touchscreen technology was arguably the best working feature on the device and even it was aggressively buggy (so buggy that when Jobs floggeded the product on stage he was actually wielding a dummy product that was entirely pre-programmed). Even more buggy were the “Mobile Phone” and “Internet Communicator” elements of the device. Promised features like voice messaging, ‘high-speed internet’, and video downloads were missing, the slick Apple design was ever-present but its operating system was largely judged by reviewers as obtuse and hard to understand. The high price point topping $550 dollars was off-putting to general audiences, and the glass screens were prone to shattering.
It was an expensive and disappointing flop. From a review from businessman Mark Cuban written 2 weeks after the release.
"The release of the Apple iPhone is perhaps the biggest marketing failure since Ishtar and Waterworld combined. It’s hard to imagine a world where this device could have met the sky-high promises that have been made, but this seems fundamentally flawed, falling into the classic design trap, that users and designers want the same thing from a product."
Sales were still strong, though the post-release drubbing blunted its potential, especially outside of the United States where enthusiasm was greatly dampened, leading to harsh price drops. The iPhone’s poor initial performance was not its death knell, and its key touch screen feature still proved a big draw for buyers and pushed other mobile phone companies like Blackberry, Palm, Android, and LG to push forward into a touch screen era, hopefully to better results.
(Left to Right Above) Steve Jobs Unveils The iPhone and a Purchaser
(Left to Right Below) New Yorker Covers Covering the Evolution of Mobile Phones
MOVIES
It was another blockbuster year for blockbuster movies, topping the previous and fully rejuvenating the financially lagging film industry. With plenty of big films that captured the attention and the wallets of general audiences, especially with more additions to franchise films (which were becoming a key pillar of the industry), like Pirates of the Caribbean, another Harry Potter Film, and a 3rd installment to the Sony, Sam Raimi helmed Spider-Man Series.
ComicBookDiscussion.Com
Talk about a tour de force. Sam Raimi’s Spiderman Trilogy is complete, and before you read even one more word, I implore you. WATCH THIS MOVIE, bring your friends, bring your family, bring everyone because this is the Spiderman movie we’ve been waiting for.
Now that you’ve hopefully seen it, allow me to gush for a second. It’s a rare thing that trilogy’s go this way, usually, there is a dip in quality, the desperation seeping in at the seams, the studios milking the cow dry, etc. Not here, you can tell that this is the story Raimi wanted to tell.
The Spider-Man facing his greatest threat to date, the Vulture without a doubt the most unadulterated & villainous of the Spidey villains to date. I love Dafoe’s Goblin, but we can all see the ham, and on subsequent watches, Doc Oc reads more tragically, but Ben Kinsley’s Vulture is a real remorseless killer and it’s interesting to see that dynamic out on screen. With Spidey on the ropes, practically on the run, using his smarts (which haven’t been utilized to the extent they definitely should be) to bring down this menace. I won’t put any more spoilers in just to give even the impatient the opportunity to see it as they should, but just remember to bring some tissues.
(Left to Right) Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Spider-Man 3
Other than Spider-Man 3, the year turned out to be rather dry for the genre, with only the second Fantastic 4 Movie which largely flopped to audiences, however to those who were paying close attention, plenty of news continued to drip out on the production of Marvel Studio’s independently financed Captain America movie.
The Inside Scoop on the Captain America Meltdown
Another day, another expose from Marvel Studio’s production lot. In the span of one year, the comic book company’s first foray into direct movie production does not seem to be going to plan. Already they’ve suffered from a director dropping out, two recasts, poor weather, one reported meltdown on set, bad blood between the writing and production staff, and now supposedly a spate of rewrites and reshoots, but still the release date for this movie Captain America remains an unchanged 2008 (specific date), either an optimistic move or a financially desperate one.
Two comic/novel book adaptations did both finally manage to reach the big screen, Daran Aronofsky’s Watchman and adaption of Allan Moor’s comic of the same name and Terry Gilliam's long-suffering Good Omens both to mixed reviews and middling box office returns, the films appealed to fans of the source material, both considered unadaptable for the big screen and in the eyes of some critics and general audiences, perhaps they should have stayed that way. Another comic adaption came to film, this time by Zach Snyder, and unlike the previous was much more successful in terms of the box office Ronin
One of the year's unexpected hits (especially when taking into account the thrashing it received from the critics) was the Michael Bay, Power Rangers Movie.
MY-LIVE_REVIEWS.COM
I think it’s fair to ask, what is going on? This movie is a disaster from top to bottom, side to side. Any way you look at it, it is a complete failure, the only thing going for it, is that if you want a fast way to rot your brains, that isn’t just sitting on the couch, getting fat eating junk food for hours, have I got the movie for you!
I honestly don’t know what to say, Usually, I’m at the point of the review where I describe the plot details, but there are none! What I think this movie is about is an evil wizard who attacks the earth with giant monsters. So a good wizard gives 5 teenagers robot suits to fight them, ordinarily, I would place this into a big basket labeled 'Kids movie'. But the truth is, I can’t in good conscience endorse this movie for kids, it’s so packed with sexual innuendo, outdated cultural references, and pretty gnarly violence that I don’t think kids should watch this.
Have we not learned as a society, that Michael Bay who I sincerely believe has the capacity to be talented, is now solely catering to the basest Id of our society, the frat bros who want to watch a robot punch a giant lizard before getting to the gratuitous T&A. Apparently no, we haven’t learned, because this movie is a smash hit. Are you kidding me?
(Left to Right) Good Omens, Watchmen, Ronin, Power Rangers
Michael Bay’s Box Office Juggernaut notwithstanding, plenty of creative and more mature cinema did emerge in 2007. Including the two biggest award winners No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, both of which were showered with awards as well as the historical epic Saladin featuring Sean Connery as the eponymous Saladin, a piece of cross-racial casting that caused a minor uproar for critics, with some calling it blackface while the director defended the casting and Sean as the “perfect man to play the role in a virtuoso performance” Which satisfied the academy as it granted him the Best Actor Award.
In the animation department, the conclusion to the Cartoon Network, Samurai Jack TV Show. The Samurai Jack film was a darker and much more mature conclusion than many fans expected, which caused a small outcry by parents groups who took their parents to see the film. From Pixar, the first film being released in coordination with Sony Studios Ratatouille. The departure of Pixar from the Disney family, had an immediate effect especially in its theme parks as the Pixar characters were phased out and Pixar began work, but even without Disney’s marketing magic, the film was very well received and financially successful further underscoring what some saw as competing visions for both studios, especially as Disney’s own animated film Meet the Robinsons had an underwhelming reception. And contributed to Comcast's decision to revamp Disney’s internal, more traditional animation houses, initiating production on The Princess and the Frog and Bolt, compared to Pixar which forged a new relationship with Sony Studios.
A number of other big films were released in 2007 films like I Am Legend, an action film that featured a vampire hunting Will Smith, The horror movie Geralds Game a Stephen King Adaption and the Documentary Sicko, by Michael Moore which was a thorough investigation into the failure of the United States to pass healthcare reform, including secret camera footage of legislators from the legislative battle this year as the crew posed as healthcare lobbyists to gain insider access and embarrass Washington D.C. ending in another excoriation by the filmmaker at the 2008 Oscars.
(Left to Right) Sean Connery Wins Best Actor, Samurai Jack, Pixar Mascots Leave Disney World, Geralds Game, Sicko
BUSINESS & THE ECONOMY
The big news story of the business world was undoubtedly the mortgage market downturn. For years, there had been a debate in the insurance industry about the value of the American homeowner market, was it a large bubble? Or was it simply overvalued? Most had been pricing in a market correction for years, but by the fall of 2007, it was becoming clear, just how uncertain the future of the housing market (what many analysts see as traditionally one of the safest and bedrock markets in the economy) was.
Money Matters -CNN
Chris: Hello and welcome to Money Matters on CNN, with me Chris Isidore, tonight The Housing Market, headed for a recovery? Or are tougher times to come? Tonight with me I have two experts to bash heads on the issue, we have Lisa Panasiti here a spokeswoman for Standards and Poors, she also used to work for the Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and believes the country is gearing up for recovery, and Lawrence Yun a chief economist for The National Association of Realtors who’s economic forecasts are frequently referred to as the gold standard and has a much gloomier outlook for the national economy, gentlemen and women thank you.
Lisa & Lawrence: Thank You
Chris: Lawrence let’s start with you, why are you so down on the economy?
Lawrence: Well Chris, let’s just take a look at the data, actually my forecasts for the last year, 2007 were off, last year I said the market would dip 3-5%. But right now we’re looking at a nearly 7% dip, If someone told me that when I wrote this, I would have told them you’re crazy, but from what I’ve seen this isn’t just a blip, the foundations settling if it were. This points to a structural failure in the mortgage system, where a lot of properties are simply overvalued, and the only way to undo that is a major price correction, possibly 10 maybe up to 12% next year. And that could mean if the models are correct, a major recession, we may already be in one.
Chris: And you Lisa, why are you so sunny?
Lisa: This is a little melodramatic Chris, a major recession? I think some of those models are a little out of date, it’s true the market is contracting at the moment, but that’s a good thing, the fundamentals of this economy, jobs, productivity, and government spending are all healthy. Yes there are some volatile mortgages but those are the ones that will be swallowed by the banks and sold on to willing buyers, that is the sign of a sturdy system. These “Subprime mortgages” are certainly a fiasco, and there will be big questions for lenders once we’re through this, but Lawrence’s models simply don’t factor in everything.
Chris: But your models are also forecasting a downturn?
Lisa: Yes Chris, but this would be a controlled price adjustment, complete with government stimulus, not the total collapse that Lawrence is overselling.
Lawrence: Ha! Ask any short seller right now and they are looking at the market with glee, because they’ve never seen it like this before, a total feeding frenzy
Chris: Ok, let’s settle down a little, we’ve got a vigorous debate ahead of us it seems.
Elsewhere in the world of business, one curios story that continued to unfold in downtown Chicago was the ongoing construction of the Trump Spire, which was supposed to be the tallest building in the world. The development ran headlong into opposition both from members of the public, and local politicians including mayor Richard M. Daley, who was at the helm of the powerful Chicago machine, who supported local pressure groups who both wanted to protect the Chicago skyline from advertising and certain groups who didn’t want the cities historic Sears Tower to be overshadowed by the Spire.
Throughout the political fight, Trump refused to cede to the groups insisting that “Chicago will have the tallest and most beautiful building in the world, because frankly if it isn’t Chicago, it will be the Arabs or the Japanese, but we don’t want that” And recruited support for the project from the likes of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich who was similarly no stranger to foul mouth politics. “Our city needs to dream, and when we dream, we don’t just dream big, we dream the biggest”.
(Left to Right) Mortgage Crisis, DonaldTrump, and Illinois Governor Blagojevich
2007 was another banner year for television, first for endings, specifically for two long-running series, the Sopranos and The West Wing. The long-running HBO crime drama The Sopranos went out on an explosive finale, that was lauded by its fans as the payoff they always wanted, to a show that had redefined what scripted television drama was supposed to be.
The final season of the show put the titular crime family into all-out war with its New Jersey and New York rivals, a battle that Tony realizes he couldn't win. He turns a rat before the rival organizations can destroy him and his family. This decision successfully places his surviving family into state witnesses, but one that finally ends his life when he is gunned down by his long-time associate Christopher Moltisanti, though widely praised critics claimed the series lost much of its intrigue pathos in favor of a more generic action-centric ending for televisions favorite crime boss a decision defended by the Soprano’s creator David Chase “I always knew how I was gonna end it, these mobsters live fundamentally boring lives, that are usually cut violently short, what else really could happen”.
The West Wing also had its finale, a two-part season as President Owens faced down a myriad of scandals, and eventually an impeachment trial over allegations over leaked national security documents. The trial threatens to bring the whole administration down as votes line up to convict the President, however, the case against him unravels when a key piece of evidence, a recorded conversation is found to be entirely doctored. However, Owens reveals to his wife that he did in fact order the leak. Part 2 of the season, acting essentially as the show’s final goodbye, after the death of former President Bartlett, brings the temperature down in Washington and allows for a full cast reunion.
But 2007 also served as a year for new shows, to replace the drams that left, most prominently Mad Men on ABC, a television show about Advertising Executives in New York City in 1980 and its protagonist/antihero Daniel Draper. Another show on Showtime was The House Winsor which was a television show that offered a scandalous and at times historically inaccurate look into the British Royal family from the perspective of a multi-seasonal biopic. Both shows attracted high viewership and continued to solidify television as a celebrated medium for long-form storytelling, rather than its traditional episodic roots.
The specter of a writer's strike hung in the air throughout 2007, only to be averted by negotiators, which prevented a potentially disastrous impact on the television industry, for instance in fear of a strike, many production companies sought to develop more reality television shows as a cheap way to insulate themselves from future strikes and only spurned them to further invest into various streaming platforms to make up the cost of the new residual agreement and drop in the home market.
(Left to Right) The Sopranos, The West Wing, Mad Men, The Windsors
EVENTS & MUSIC
2007 was also a year for big events, and notably one disastrous one. The 2007 Superbowl, was supposed to be a spectacle, but it turned into a disaster of epic proportions. First, the NFL upset its fans by cracking down on “copyright infringement” essentially banning the word Super Bowl from appearing at any Super Bowl event, that wasn’t sponsored by the NFL. This decision led to massive backlash from practically every Church, Bar, and Casual Business in the country that rebranded to “Big Game” parties, leading to the mocking rebranding of the NFL to be the No-Fun-League.
Then the game itself became rained out for the first time ever, and a power outage made the Prince Half-Time Show unwatchable for the 100+ million viewers at home. The expensive advertisements were also subject to scrutiny both for the inclusion and mockery of homosexuality. And on top of that, the game was hopelessly one-sided, when the Colts beat the Saints in a 46-10 blowout.
2007 was a year when the term ‘Culture War’ roared to life once again, specifically over the hot-button issue of Gay rights and specifically the right to marriage, as more American states, jurisdictions, and even the Supreme Court grappled with the issue, but it wasn’t the only cultural touchstone, so was the breakdown of America’s favorite stars and starlets.
Starting with the arrest of major celebrities like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears who were all arrested for some form of public intoxication. The British Singer Songwriter Amy Winehouse fresh off the success of her best-selling album suffered a public breakdown that ended in her being placed in a rehabilitation center. And perhaps the biggest PR disaster of all was the biggest celebrity story. The epic unraveling of the Queen of Pop, Madonna, ended in the postponing and cancellation of the Confessions Tour which was already sold out in many cities and billed as the biggest tour in the world.
Madonna’s disaster of a year, emerged in an era of 24-hour news but also dedicated social media websites and ‘reporters’ to following and detailing the meltdown, especially when combined with the deluge of comedy, think pieces, and commentary on the slow-motion car crash. An internet economy that generated its own pro-Madonna counterculture, and was according to analytics the most clicked story of 2007, above even the NASA Atlantis Disaster in terms of total volume of headlines for the year.
As the world of music was upended by the trials and tribulations of Madonna, there was still some daylight for new and popular music to emerge. Especially as the internet music market continued to shift under the industry’s feet.
Bands like Radiohead, shook the industry by releasing music entirely online via their own websites, which according to the band allowed them to break a sales barrier they had never managed to do before and ignore record labels, a method that was followed by other major artists like The Police and Rage Against the Machine who reunited to release online albums., claiming that the cost of distribution was the lowest it had ever been for music production.
Most Popular Music of 2007
- Irreplaceable – Beyonce
- Fergalicious – Fergie
- Umbrella – Rihanna
- The Sweet Escape – Gwen Stefanie
- Buy U a Drank – T-Pain
- Before You Speak – The Dixie Chicks
- Girlfreind – Avril Lavign
- Smack That – Akon
- Taking It All – Britney Spears
- Make Me Wonder – Maroon 5
(Left to Right Above) Prince Half-Time Show, Pride Flag in Washington, Celebrity Mugshots
(Left to Right Below) Amy Winehouse, Maddonah Expose Magazine, Radiohead
This one took a while, but I have a reason. I recently finished work on and released a mod for the campaign trail. American Carnage A Trump Presidency Simulator.
I am quite proud of it.
Also WOW, we just hit 1 Million Views. And I am so excited for the next year of this timeline, I really think the best is yet to come.
I am quite proud of it.
Also WOW, we just hit 1 Million Views. And I am so excited for the next year of this timeline, I really think the best is yet to come.
Last edited:
I actually wondering what MeToo movement will be like ITTL in 2017 since I've heard that this gained popularity due to numerous sexual-abuse allegations of Harvey Weinstein.
Thank you so much for your amazing work
It's all well deserved and if it was still running for the Turtledove I would've voted on it again
I could finally rest in peace
And say goodbye to ipad and Siri
Wonderful title song choice!
And you see that The New Yorker cover son? That's what we called genius
And say goodbye to ipad and Siri
Wonderful title song choice!
And you see that The New Yorker cover son? That's what we called genius
Last edited:
Webtube didn't survive. I hope there will be an adequate replacement.
About the iPhone, I think the development will go pretty much like OTL.
Don't forget Tails Adventure. ITTL it becomes my most cherished video game of my childhood since with Sega choosing to keep Shadow dead and giving Tails his own action RPG space adventure game it fares much better in reviews compared with OTl Shadow The Hedgehog likely getting a 7 or 8 out of 10. While not a masterpiece but still a fun side game.
As for Once In A Blue Moon I would say it success (though still pale in comparison to Pixar) would show that there's a market for 2D films (hybrid to be percise) eventually leading to a second Disney Renaissance starting in 2009 possibly butterflying Disney buying Marvel and Star Wars opting to focus on original works. If 2D animation manages to a comeback even in hybrid form would Don Bluth come out of retirement to direct animated films?
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet.
The upcoming 2008 election is very much going to be determined by just how bad the recession will be, and how President Edwards responds to the crisis.
This is hecking ominous. Hopefully the crack won’t break the Democrats completely come next election. Although, if the Republicans win and then the economy cracks, they will have to deal with it and it’ll be a poisoned chalice… Lots to figure out
Okay, I said that I expected death in this update, but plz not Amy. She deserved better
Basically influencers(more so of the gaming type) who stream with anime avatars replacing their faces with the program making the avatar move and react like the person behind it is in real time
Like those fake Chinese influencer people paid by the Chinese government to do advertising for their bullcrap and pretend that they are younger attractive women with a program?
What would be the repercussion of the failed launch of the IPhone? I assume Apple's competitiors like Palm and Blackberry would seize the initiative.
Yeah except without the pretending thing since everyone knows they're not anime girls irl
Great stuff!
A world where alt-YT and the iPhone both petered out in 2007 is one *very* different culturally and aesthetically from our own. Legacy media probably holds on much longer
A world where alt-YT and the iPhone both petered out in 2007 is one *very* different culturally and aesthetically from our own. Legacy media probably holds on much longer