August, 1981---IBM releases the first IBM PC, legitimizing home computers and killing of a ton of quirky home computers over the next few years. The Homebrew Computer Club was pretty much over at this point in time anyway.
January, 1990---Operation Sun Devil goes down, where the Secret Service arrest a bunch of teenagers who have illegally accessed computers and charged with disseminating internal AT&T documents describing how 911 works. The era of the 80s "hackers" ended.
March 2000---the tech stock market crases. The Internet craze pretty much tanked at this point.
None of this is anything I consider "arcane inside references" but hey, I'm into computer history.
This isn't a big date technologically speaking, but as far as the social history of the internet goes, it was huge. I suspect it's one of the big reasons AOL was so demonized. (There are obviously many others.)
Thanks for responding with these! I share your interest in computer history, and I also enjoy seeing, as best I can, computer culture. Never have I seen such a short summarization of the latter which has given me as much insight as this.
