Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on a microprocessor will double every 18 - 24 months. But Stanford students measure technological change in four-year increments -- the time it takes for an undergraduate class to move through the University. A look at the three most recent "generations":
CLASS OF '93:
Frosh with computers: 50%
Gadget of Choice:
Macintosh SEs or Classics with 9-inch black-and-white screens. Few connected to the Internet before they hit the garage-sale heap.
Getting Connected:
E-mail was a novel way to keep in touch with friends at universities around the country, if your dorm had a computer cluster. But not everyone took advantage. "Why would I want e-mail?" recalls Laura Klein. "We still made flyers for parties."
Surfing Report:
World Wide What? The web wasn't even born until sophomore year. But class members took to it quickly, co-founding Excite and FogDog and becoming early employees of Yahoo! "The Stanford undergraduate class of 1993 . . . burst onto the scene just as the World Wide Web was coming into its own," the New York Times noted in February 2000.
