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This is an edition of Plugged In, a weekly newsletter by Fast Company global technology editor Harry McCracken. You can sign up to receive it each Friday and read all issues here. Hello and welcome back to Plugged In. We at Fast Company are uncommonly fond of the year 1995. After all, it’s the year we officially began ongoing publication, after putting out a test issue in 1993. But there’s a more straightforward reason why we decided to publish a series of stories this week about some of 1995’s most significant products and developments. Last year, we produced a package paying tribute to 1994, and it turned out so well we decided to continue the tradition of 30-year-old flashbacks. Here are the seven stories that make up our 1995 Week: How Sega’s surprise Saturn launch backfiredand changed gaming forever ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ predicted our addictive digital future This IBM ThinkPad was astounding in 1995and still is 1995 was the year the internet grew up Windows 95’s look and feel are more impressive than ever How Newgrounds accidentally became one of online culture’s defining sites The AOL hacking tool that invented phishing and inspired a generation Until we began work on these stories, I’d forgotten that in 2015 we published a similar roundup of articles timed to 20 years post-1995 (I told you it’s a special year to us.) The topics were entirely different from what we picked this time, so what the heckhere are those pieces, too: 1995: The Year Everything Changed What it Was Like to Build a World Wide Web Site in 1995 What it Was Like to Attend Hacker High When They Filmed Hackers at My High School How Match.com Has Helped Us Hook Up and Find Love Since 1995 Submerged as we are in a never-ending deluge of news about AI and other pressing subjects, it’s always nice to have an excuse to briefly press pause on concerns of the day and look back. At the same time I get nervous about growing too nostalgic. Any objective assessment of tech circa 1995 should acknowledge that in many ways it was terrible. For starters, the PCs were disastrously crash-prone and prone to eating your work in a way that’s far less common today. Sans modern conveniences such as USB and Wi-Fi, they made tasks as fundamental as adding a printer into a bit of a science project. Online search tools were rudimentary, digital photography wasn’t yet capable of competing with film, and downloading software such as Netscape Navigator over a dial-up connection took so long that it was borderline impractical. In short, I don’t want to go back. Yet thinking about the period as we worked on our new series, I also developed a new appreciation for what we’ve lost. Many of the ways technology has changed everyday life for the better were yet to comebut so were most of its downsides. In case you’ve forgotten the state of computing in 1995or weren’t around to experience ita study from October of that year provides some helpful context. Conducted by the Times Mirror Center, it reported that only 32% of Americans used computers. Of them, only a subset went onlinetypically a few times a week. They typically sent three email messages per day and received five. Just 32% of those online said they would miss it “a lot” if they couldn’t do it anymore, a far lower percentage than the newspaper readers and cable TV subscribers who deemed those media essential. In other words, the digital world didn’t matter all that much, even to most of the relatively few Americans who were online. It’s tough to have an unhealthy relationship with a technology if you use it only occasionally and can easily see yourself living without it. Nobody checked their smartphone a jillion times a day in 1995: Smartphones barely existed and weren’t yet connected to the internet. Even laptops were a rarity, owned by only 18% of people who had a PC, according to the Times Mirror study. Instead, computing was still nearly synonymous with desktop PCs, and going online was a conscious decision involving a dial-up modem and a phone line. Unless you had two lines, you couldn’t even check your email if someone else in the house was making a call. Compared to a modern computer or phone with a persistent internet connection, a 1995 PC on dial-up was a Fortress of Solitude. Hackers were already wreaking havoc when they couldread Alex Pasternack’s story on “AOHell” for proofbut with e-commerce and online banking still rare, there was a limit to how much damage they could do. Being overrun in notifications was unknown, because there was no practical way to deliver them to a computing device. (Even Pointcast, the famously bandwidth-sucking alert system that pioneered “push” technology, didn’t arrive until 1996.) The business models that powered access to technology in 1995 also feel healthier than those of 2025. Online advertising was already getting rollingWired.com ran the web’s first banner ad in October 1994but the days of tech giants collecting vast amounts of personal data and using it to target adertising were still in the future. People paid for tech products with money, not by sacrificing some of their privacy. In retrospect, it all seems downright Edenesque. But the consumers of 1995including medidn’t look at it that way, because we didn’t know what was to come. The Times Mirror survey says that 50% of respondents were already concerned about computers being used to invade privacy. Some 24% considered themselves “overloaded with information,” though perhaps they were more stressed out by an excess of cable channels than anything they were doing on a computer. The Times Mirror Center later changed its name to the Pew Research Center and continues to survey Americans about their attitude toward technology. In April, it reported that twice as many adults thought that AI’s impact over the next 20 years would be negative than those who expected it to be positive. I can’t help but think that the past three decades have left us more jaded than we were in the 1990sand that it’s a fair reaction to what the tech industry has given us. Will the tech of 2045 or 2055 prompt reveries for the simpler times of 2025? It’s a scary thought. I repeat: I have no desire to return to the tech of 1995. But understanding it better can help gird us for what’s next. That was among our goals for 1995 Week, and I hope it shows in our stories. More top tech stories from Fast Company Slack expands AI features with enterprise search, translation, and smart summariesNew offerings will be able to draft documents and answer questions based on knowledge housed in Slack and linked cloud systems.Read More How to launch a great product: Advice from a Google execIt comes down to balancing the three Ps: people, politics, and product.Read More YouTube Shorts algorithm steers users away from political content, study findsResearchers say YouTube’s algorithm downplays political topics in favor of viral entertainment to keep users watching.Read More This beloved retro gaming computer is making a comebackand it’ll cost you $299A reimagined Commodore 64 is now available for preorder, offering nostalgia with updated specs and support for classic games.Read More Inside the redesign that will make you actually want to use NextdoorThe hyperlocal app is moving away from its message board layout with a new focus on local news, real-time alerts, and AI suggestions.Read More Gmail’s new ‘Manage Subscriptions’ tool could change email marketing foreverGoogle is rolling out a powerful unsubscribe feature in Gmail that gives users more controland marketers a reason to rethink their strategy.Read More
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Known for launching Broadway hits and hosting celebrity casts, the storied Williamstown Theatre Festival is writing its next chapter, both onstage and behind the scenes. With a new creative director, expanded programming, and what it describes as a startup mentality, the festival aims to become the “Coachella of theater,” bringing the legacy institution to newfound cultural relevancy. The festival kicked off its 71st iteration on Thursday, July 17, on the picturesque campus of Williams College in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. While not necessarily a household name to non-theater fans, it has been a major springboard for talent for decades, helping to launch the careers of renowned actors Christopher Walken, Bradley Cooper, and Viola Davis, and playwrights Dominique Morisseau, Terrence McNally, and Michael R. Jackson, among many others. Yet despite its storied legacy, the festival is facing similar struggles as its peers. Nonprofit theaters across the country have been hurting since the pandemic, struggling to regain their pre-COVID audiences, leading to a number of closures, fewer shows, and scaled-back programming. “The traditional nonprofit theater model isn’t sustainable anymore, and our choice in this moment was really innovation over inertia,” Raphael Picciarelli, managing director of strategy and transformation at Williamstown, told Fast Company. While before, programming centered on single theater productions, with around seven plays spread out over 12 weeks, the new model condenses the festival’s timeline, offers experiences beyond sit-down shows, and brings big names like Jeremy O. Harris and Kaia Gerber to the mix. Jeremy O. Harris (left) and Raphael Picciarelli [Photo: Matthew Leifheit/courtesy Williamstown Theatre Festival] “We’re really reimagining our entire operating and business model,” Picciarelli says. With big risk comes big investment: The festival is increasing its budget for this summer to $8 million, up from $4.7 million last year. The increase is made possible with help from a number of large anonymous donors, the festival says, while the organization is actively pursuing new revenue streams. Staging transformation Picciarelli first joined Williamstown at a “point of reflection,” he says, following a series of work culture concerns and rising costs in the industry, and with many live theater organizations still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. With a background in consulting (he advised C-suite executives on how to change organizations from the inside out) in addition to live theater, Picciarelli began consulting for the festival during the summer of 2023. “The leadership and board made a very sound, responsible decision to pull back in terms of programming and to take a second to really think about the future,” he says, referencing a more limited 2023 repertoire. Early on, Picciarelli identified the organization’s strongest traits, its small 14-person full-time team and renowned legacy, which combined with the festival’s yearn for change proved to be a perfect opportunity for transformation. “There was a real desire for innovation, which you don’t always see at legacy institutions,” he says. “Innovation requires the space to try and fail and try again.” For instance, last year the festival held a weekend event with 16 shows to test how many shows could be staged simultaneously. It turns out 16 was too much,” says Antonello Di Benedetto, assistant managing director and a staff member of nine years. “That’s how we settled on eight for this year. We’re going to see if that is the right cadence, or if we need to increase it or decrease it next year. But it’s totally a prototype.” Serving as an experiment for the future of the festival, and theater industry as a whole, Williamstown is spearheading change with cues from the private sector, and startups in particular. “Adopting a startup mindset, as opposed to a more institutional mindset, is about testing new formats, rethinking how people access the work, and creating this more flexible, nimble infrastructure to really support that right,” Picciarelli says. New strategies, big names Operationally, one of the biggest additions to the festival is the creation of its “creative collective,” a group of multidisciplinary guest curators set to rotate every year, led by Harris, who rose to fame as the writer of Broadway’s Tony-nominated Slave Play. “A key part of this innovation in terms of bringing new voices into the artistic process [is] really breaking open the curation model,” Picciarelli says. The collective includes Gerber with Alyssa Reeder; Christopher Rudd; and Alex Stoclet, who are leading the literary, dance, and music curation, respectively. The introduction of musical elements and dance as alternative forms to experience storytelling is also a part of the festival’s transformative push. Additionally, the festival is adopting a multiday ticketing approach. Its like the Coachella or Sundance of theater, where you’re bringing people together over an extended period of time to just immerse themselves,” Di Benedetto says. In terms of onstage programing, organizers are also taking risks and attracting known talentfor instance, by staging the first opera in the festival’s history, or bringing actresses like Pamela Anderson and Amber Heard to this year’s productions. Visitors can also enjoy visual and audio installations, nature walks, comedy shows, and even a show in an ice rink. Building the right guardrails Beyond what visitors can expect to see while at the festival, a lot of the transformation has taken place behind the curtain to build a new work culture. As is common in the theater industry, labor at the festival had been unregulated and oftentimes unpaid. In 2021, the Los Angeles Times reported on a eight-page letter sent to the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s organizers and board of trustees outlining a toxic work culture and pattern of safety hazards in the organization. “People overworked themselves because they were doing it for the love of the art. But we have to be honestit’s also a profession,” Di Benedetto says. “If any other industry behaved in the same way, it would never hold water.” He adds that the theater industry “is now finally catching up to the idea that this is also a job.” Organizers are trying to prove there can be a business model in theater that is not reliant on exploitation. Since 2021, all seasonal workers at the festival are paid regardless of their position, including apprentices and interns. Additionally, while seasonal workers could previously be staffed to do various things, from electrical to costume work, positions are now structured with clear expectations. Written guidelines are also enforced to keep workers and the organization accountable, and to ensure that all team members are treated equitably and respectfully. For instance, daily and weekly hour caps and mandatory breaks throughout the day are now in practice. A list of culture values and statements was also developed ahead of this year’s festival, and will be available on the newly launched “company hub, which centralizes information for staff. “As we are in this startup phase and as much as we’re really pushing forward in inventive ways, we also know where we’ve been,” Picciarelli says. “Part of this work is also continuing to be cognizant and review and be careful with our internal practices to really ensure that this is a healthy, respectful, and sustainable place to beand to work with that, building the right guardrails, investing in our people in the right way.”
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Big changes are coming to the web in the days ahead. On July 25, the U.K.s Online Safety Act will take effect, bringing sweeping changes to how users experience the internet. Within the next week, websites like Reddit and Bluesky will begin asking users to verify their ageeither by providing official ID, bank details that prove their age, or a selfie analyzed by age-estimation software. The act mandates that platforms implement highly effective age verification measures to prevent underage users from accessing inappropriate contentwhether thats pornography, violent material, or other age-inappropriate content. This follows a Supreme Court decision in June requiring users in Texas to provide personal information to access pornographic websites. There are growing concerns that what began with adult sites could soon expand to more general platforms. We can expect trickle-down verification creep, warns social media expert Matt Navarra. First porn, then gambling, then AI content tools, and eventually even comment sections. Some observers argue that a new era of internet regulation is beginning. Theyre calling it the “hall pass era”: To go anywhere or do anything online, users will have to hand over personal information to a range of providers. This shift towards a more ID-locked web is one of the biggest, messiest evolutions weve seen online in years, says Navarra. The era of the anonymous internet died a long time ago, but pseudonymity remains, and we are watching the death flows of the free internet, says Myles Jackman, a U.K. obscenity lawyer opposed to the upcoming changes. Carolina Are, a fellow at Northumbria Universitys Center for Digital Citizens, acknowledges the intent behind age checks but warns that ID-based systems could backfire. She argues they risk exposing usersespecially marginalized groupsto privacy violations, given how much data platforms already collect. Just look at people being refused entry into the U.S. due to social media posts, she says. David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agrees that the motivationsstopping bots and protecting kidsare understandable. But he calls the proposed age restrictions overly broad and rights-infringing. He notes they could harm adults who depend on anonymity, such as whistleblowers, sex workers, or domestic abuse survivors. Navarra expresses frustration at how open platforms are being forced to bend to a conservative worldview. Bluesky requiring official ID is the ultimate irony, he says. This platform literally was born out of Twitter’s decentralization dream [of] open, federated, anti-censorship idealsand now you need a passport to post. According to Greene, the issue reflects not a lot of deep thinking about the nature of the problem. Are agrees, suggesting the shift favors corporate interests over the public good. While [ID tech] has potential, its being adopted like every other technology: creating a gold rush climate for ID checkprivatecompanies that will expand like tech start ups and with a move fast and break things approach rather than a public sector, do no harm approach, she says.
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