1995 ended with machines that could search, and machines that could think.
Dec 5: IBM unveils Deep Blue. Dec 15: AltaVista launches. The same year, two students begin the work that becomes Google. In December, Galileo entered orbit around Jupiter and released the first probe to measure its atmosphere directly.
December closed the year with two announcements that pointed straight at now. On the fifth IBM unveiled Deep Blue, the chess machine that would beat the world champion within two years. On the fifteenth AltaVista launched and, for the first time, you could search a real slice of the whole web in an instant. That same season, two students started the project that became Google.
I did not know any of that would matter the way it did. Nobody did. But the shape was already there at the end of 1995: machines that find, and machines that reason.
Thirty years later I am still working at that exact intersection, and it still feels like the beginning. The only question that ever held my attention is what we do with the time these machines give back.