2007 Pop Culture History

In 2007, Steve Jobs stood on a stage in San Francisco and introduced a device that combined a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator. The audience responded as if he had announced the discovery of fire, which in certain respects is not an unreasonable comparison. The iPhone launched on June 29, 2007, at $499, ran on 2G, had no App Store, no front camera, and required a two-year contract with one carrier. It changed everything anyway. Also in 2007: Harry Potter ended, Britney Spears shaved her head, a NASA astronaut drove across state lines in a diaper, and the Weather Channel released a jazz album that went to number one. Not all years make sense.

Quick Facts from 2007

• World-Changing Events: The iPhone was released on June 29, 2007; the Amazon Kindle launched on November 19; Tumblr launched as a blogging platform
• Top Song: Irreplaceable by Beyoncé, the best-performing single of the year on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100; Crank That (Soulja Boy) by Soulja Boy Tell’em was the cultural phenomenon of the summer
• Must-See Movies: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Juno, Enchanted, Ratatouille, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood
• Most Famous Person in America: Steve Jobs, who introduced the iPhone in January and shipped it in June
• Notable Books: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling and The Shack by William P. Young
• Price of a 2nd Generation iPod: $149.99
• Federal Minimum Wage: $5.85 per hour (some states higher)
• The Funny Guys: Patton Oswalt, Bill Engvall, Frank Caliendo, and Louis C.K.
• The Viral Phrase: “I Can Has Cheezburger?” — created by Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami, launching the lolcat phenomenon and one of the internet’s first major meme franchises
• The Dance: Cupid Shuffle by Cupid was the most popular line dance since the Cha Cha Slide in 1998
• Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Pig, associated with generosity, diligence, and a tendency to enjoy life’s comforts; pig years are considered fortunate, which 2007 was, depending on whether you worked in mortgage-backed securities
• The Conversation: Have you finished Deathly Hallows yet? Don’t tell me anything

Top Ten Baby Names of 2007

Girls: Emma, Madison, Hannah, Emily, Elizabeth
Boys: Jacob, Michael, Ethan, Joshua, Daniel

Emma held the top spot for girls for the third consecutive year. Jacob had been number one for boys for nine straight years. The Harry Potter series concluded in 2007, though neither Harry nor Hermione made a meaningful dent in the naming charts, suggesting that enthusiasm for a character and the willingness to name a child after them are distinct forms of commitment.

Fashion Icons and Sex Symbols of 2007

Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, Eva Longoria, Victoria Beckham, Rihanna, Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera, Ali Larter, Fergie, Megan Fox

Victoria Beckham relocated to Los Angeles in 2007 following David Beckham’s transfer to the LA Galaxy, and the couple’s arrival was met with attention from American media that surprised even the British press. Megan Fox appeared in Transformers in 2007 and went from relative unknown to one of the most photographed people in the country within a single summer.

Leading Men and Hollywood Hunks of 2007

Hugh Jackman, Adam Levine, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt

The Quote

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should — our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa, or should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future.” — Lauren Caitlin Upton, Miss Teen South Carolina, responding to a question about why a fifth of Americans cannot locate their own country on a world map. The response was viewed over 50 million times on YouTube, which was either an encouraging sign of civic interest or a troubling sign about why the question was being asked in the first place.

Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

Vladimir Putin, for consolidating power in Russia and adopting an increasingly assertive posture in global affairs. Putin had overseen Russia’s economic recovery, fueled largely by high oil prices, and had begun using that leverage to reassert Russian influence in ways that made Western governments increasingly uneasy. Time’s selection was described as recognition of impact, with the usual editorial caveat that impact and admiration are not the same thing.

Miss America and Miss USA

Miss America: Lauren Nelson, Lawton, Oklahoma
Miss USA: Rachel Smith, Nashville, Tennessee

We Lost in 2007

Anna Nicole Smith, a former Playboy model and reality television personality, was found unresponsive in a hotel room in Hollywood, Florida, on February 8, 2007, at age 39. The cause of death was an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. Her death came less than five months after the death of her son, Daniel. The subsequent legal battle over her estate and the paternity of her infant daughter generated months of tabloid coverage.

Kurt Vonnegut, the novelist whose dark, satirical work — particularly Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle — had shaped American literary culture for four decades, died on April 11, 2007, at age 84, of brain injuries sustained in a fall. He had been saying goodbye for years. He seemed to mean it each time.

Luciano Pavarotti, the Italian tenor who had done more than any performer of his era to bring opera to a popular audience, died September 6, 2007, at age 71, of pancreatic cancer. His performances of Nessun Dorma at the 1990 World Cup and at the Three Tenors concerts introduced classical vocal music to millions of people who had never previously encountered it.

Merv Griffin, television producer and host who created both Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune — two of the longest-running game shows in television history — died August 12, 2007, at age 82. His two creations have been generating royalties for his estate ever since.

Evel Knievel, the motorcycle stuntman whose attempted jumps over buses, fountains, and canyons made him one of the most recognizable figures in American popular culture from the late 1960s through the 1970s, died November 30, 2007, at age 69. He had broken 433 bones during his career, a figure the Guinness Book of World Records once listed as the most broken bones survived by any human being.

America in 2007 — The Context

The Iraq War was in its fourth year and increasingly unpopular. The troop surge ordered by President Bush in January 2007 added approximately 20,000 additional soldiers and was initially met with considerable skepticism. By the end of the year, violence had decreased measurably in Baghdad, though the underlying political situation remained unresolved.

The housing market, which had been inflating for years on the strength of loose lending standards and the widespread belief that real estate values could not decline nationally, began showing serious signs of stress. Several major subprime mortgage lenders filed for bankruptcy in 2007. Bear Stearns’s hedge funds collapsed in June. The Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates in September. The financial press used the word “contagion” with increasing frequency. The full extent of what was coming would not be apparent until 2008.

The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, was moved from seven minutes to midnight to five minutes to midnight in 2007, the first adjustment since 2002. The scientists cited the spread of nuclear weapons technology, the lack of progress on disarmament, and the emerging threat of climate change as their reasons. It was the first time climate change had been cited as a factor in the Clock’s setting.

The iPhone

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs walked onto the stage at the Macworld Conference in San Francisco and introduced “a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device.” He said it three times before revealing they were the same product. The audience’s response was audible. The iPhone went on sale on June 29 at $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB model. It required a two-year contract with AT&T, the exclusive carrier. It had no App Store, no front-facing camera, no GPS, and ran on 2G. Lines formed outside Apple Stores the night before launch. The App Store would not open until the following year, but the device as shipped was sufficient to establish the template that every subsequent smartphone has followed.

The original iPhone’s development had begun as an internal project to build a touchscreen tablet. Jobs redirected the effort toward a phone after learning that Motorola and Cingular were developing a music phone together. He wanted to make the phone before anyone else could make it well. By most accounts, he succeeded.

Pop Culture Facts and History

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final volume of J.K. Rowling’s series, was published July 21, 2007. It sold 11 million copies in the United States and the United Kingdom in the first 24 hours, the fastest-selling book in history at that time. Bookstores opened at midnight. People dressed as characters. Adults read it on public transportation without the dust jacket to avoid spoilers being shouted at them, a concern that turned out to be legitimate.

In response to Eminem’s 2004 diss track “Just Lose It,” which mocked Jackson’s appearance and legal troubles, Jackson purchased the publishing rights to Eminem’s music catalog in 2007. The acquisition meant Jackson held a financial stake in the recordings used to mock him. Eminem later acquired his master’s back, but the sequence of events stands as one of the more creative responses to a diss in music industry history.

Ratatouille, directed by Brad Bird, was released June 29, 2007 — the same day as the iPhone — and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. When it opened in France, it drew the fourth-highest opening-day attendance in French movie history. For a food film to receive that reception in France is either the highest possible praise or simply appropriate.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers sued Showtime after the network named a new television series Californication, matching the title of the band’s 1999 album. The case was dismissed because the band had never trademarked the name, a fact their lawyers presumably noted as a lesson to be learned.

Gerald Ford, who died December 26, 2006, was buried January 2, 2007, making him the only U.S. president to die in one year and be buried in another — a distinction that exists largely because of how the calendar falls and says nothing meaningful about Ford, but has been noted in every trivia collection published since.

Edison’s direct-current electrical power system, installed in parts of Lower Manhattan in 1882 as the world’s first commercial electrical grid, was finally decommissioned in 2007, when the last DC-powered buildings in New York City were converted to alternating current. The system had outlasted its inventor by 76 years.

The Keyboard Cat video — featuring a cat named Fatso playing an upbeat keyboard melody — was recorded in 1984 by Charlie Schmidt but not uploaded to YouTube until 2007, where it became one of the most-used reaction memes of the early internet era. Fatso had been dead for over two decades before achieving internet fame, which is either poignant or perfectly appropriate.

The musical sting widely associated with the phrase “mmm whatcha say” in memes and with the 2007 Saturday Night Live sketch “Dear Sister” did not originate with Jason Derulo’s 2009 song “Whatcha Say”. It came from Imogen Heap’s 2005 song Hide and Seek, which Derulo later sampled. The SNL sketch used Heap’s original. Most people who have seen the meme have never heard the context.

American astronaut Steven Swanson brought DVD copies of the television series Firefly and its film sequel Serenity to the International Space Station in 2007. They remain there as part of the permanent crew entertainment library, making the ISS the only location in orbit where you can watch a show about a spaceship while actually on a spaceship.

Lisa Nowak, a NASA mission specialist who had flown on Space Shuttle Discovery in 2006, was arrested on February 5, 2007, in Orlando, Florida, charged with the attempted kidnapping and battery of Colleen Shipman, the girlfriend of fellow astronaut William Oefelein, with whom Nowak had been involved. Nowak had driven approximately 900 miles from Houston to Orlando, wearing a diaper to avoid stopping. The story’s combination of institutional prestige, romantic obsession, and logistical planning produced a level of media attention that NASA found difficult to manage.

The NFL sent a cease-and-desist letter to an Indiana church in 2007 for charging admission to a Super Bowl party featuring a television larger than 55 inches. The NFL’s broadcast rights legally restrict public showings of the game on screens larger than 55 inches to establishments with fewer than 3,750 square feet. The letter received considerably more press coverage than the NFL had anticipated, which was generally the opposite of the intended effect.

A Jeopardy! champion named Scott Weiss deliberately structured his final wager to force a three-way tie — the first in the show’s history — despite knowing he could have bet more and won outright. He later said he thought it would be fun. The producers agreed it was unprecedented. Whether it was fun for the other two contestants was not recorded.

The Weather Channel released a compilation album of the smooth jazz music played during its “Local on the 8s” weather segments. It reached number one on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz chart. The existence of a Billboard Contemporary Jazz chart and the fact that weather-forecast interstitial music could top it raise more questions than they answer.

Celebrity Hijinks of 2007

Paris Hilton served 23 days in jail following a DUI conviction, having initially been released after three days, citing medical reasons, and was then ordered back to jail by the judge. The sequence of events was covered with an intensity that many observers found disproportionate, and the participants did nothing to discourage it.

Britney Spears entered a hair salon in Tarzana, California on February 16, 2007, and shaved her own head while the stylist declined to do it for her. The photographs circulated immediately. The incident occurred during a period of severe personal difficulty that would eventually lead to a conservatorship. In retrospect, the media coverage at the time treated a mental health crisis as entertainment, a dynamic that was not widely acknowledged as such at the time.

Lindsay Lohan entered rehabilitation facilities three times in 2007, following two DUI arrests. Most outlets covering her difficulties treated them similarly, primarily as entertainment.

Nobel Prize Winners in 2007

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert of France and Peter Grünberg of Germany for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance, a quantum-mechanical effect that enabled the development of dramatically smaller and more powerful hard drives. The technology is in virtually every computer hard drive manufactured since the late 1990s.

Chemistry went to Gerhard Ertl of Germany for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces, work that laid the foundation for understanding catalysis, rust formation, and the chemistry of the ozone layer, among other applications.

Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans, and Oliver Smithies for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice using embryonic stem cells — the development of knockout mice, which became an essential tool for studying gene function and human disease.

Literature went to Doris Lessing of Britain, for her portrayal of the female experience, who, with skepticism, fire, and visionary power, has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny. At 87, she was the oldest person to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was told the news by a reporter waiting outside her home when she returned from grocery shopping. Her reaction was notably unsentimental.

The Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore for their efforts to build and disseminate greater knowledge about human-made climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures needed to counteract it. Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had been released the previous year.

Economics went to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory, which analyzes the rules of the game in economic and social settings where information is dispersed and individuals act according to their own interests.

2007 Toys Inducted to the National Toy Hall of Fame

The Atari 2600, the Kite, and Raggedy Andy were inducted in 2007. The Atari 2600’s inclusion acknowledged the console’s role in establishing home video gaming as a mainstream entertainment category, a development that by 2007 had grown into an industry larger than Hollywood.

2007 Christmas Gifts and First Appearances

The Nintendo DS and the Sony PlayStation 3 were the dominant gaming gifts of the season. The Amazon Kindle, launched November 19, 2007, at $399, sold out within hours and remained on backorder for months. Its arrival marked the beginning of the e-reader era in earnest, though few observers predicted at the time how thoroughly digital reading would reshape the publishing industry within a decade.

Broadway in 2007

No major Broadway openings are noted in the source data for 2007, though the year’s theatrical conversation was dominated by ongoing runs and Tony Award discussions. Spring Awakening, which had opened in late 2006, won eight Tony Awards in 2007, including Best Musical.

Best Film Oscar Winner

The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Mark Wahlberg, won Best Picture at the 79th Academy Awards on February 25, 2007, for the 2006 film year. Scorsese won Best Director, his first win after previous nominations for Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and The Aviator. The audience’s response when his name was read made clear that the room felt the recognition was overdue.

2007 Entries to the National Film Registry

12 Angry Men (1957)
Back to the Future (1985)
Bullitt (1968)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Days of Heaven (1978)
Grand Hotel (1932)
The House I Live In (1945)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Now, Voyager (1942), Oklahoma! (1955), The Strong Man (1926), The Three Little Pigs (1933), The Women (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939)

Top Movies of 2007

1. Spider-Man 3
2. Shrek the Third
3. Transformers
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
6. I Am Legend
7. The Bourne Ultimatum
8. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
9. Alvin and the Chipmunks
10. 300

Spider-Man 3 was the highest-grossing film of the year despite being the most critically divisive of the trilogy, with particular attention paid to a sequence in which Peter Parker, under the influence of the alien symbiote, struts down a Manhattan street to jazz music while pointing at women. The Bourne Ultimatum was the third and most technically accomplished installment in the franchise and is frequently cited as the film that changed the visual language of action cinema in the 2000s. 300, based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae, grossed $456 million on a $65 million budget and sparked a brief period in which every action film considered whether it needed more slow-motion and more abs.

No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, both released in limited release in late 2007, would go on to define the awards season and are now considered among the finest American films of the decade. Neither appears in the box office top ten, which says something about the relationship between quality and commercial performance that various parties have been discussing ever since.

Most Popular TV Shows of 2007

1. American Idol (Fox)
2. Dancing with the Stars (ABC)
3. Desperate Housewives (ABC)
4. House (Fox)
5. CSI (CBS)
6. Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
7. Sunday Night Football (NBC)
8. Survivor: China (CBS)
9. The Moment of Truth (Fox)
10. NCIS (CBS)

2007 Billboard Number One Hits

December 9, 2006 – January 5, 2007: Irreplaceable — Beyoncé (carryover from late 2006)
January 6 – January 19: Say It Right — Nelly Furtado
January 20 – February 2: The Sweet Escape — Gwen Stefani featuring Akon
February 3 – March 2: Say It Right — Nelly Furtado
March 3 – March 9: What Goes Around/Comes Around — Justin Timberlake
March 10 – April 6: This Is Why I’m Hot — MIMS
April 7 – May 4: Girlfriend — Avril Lavigne
May 5 – May 25: Beautiful Girls — Sean Kingston
May 26 – June 8: Big Girls Don’t Cry — Fergie
June 9 – June 29: Umbrella — Rihanna
June 30 – July 27: The Way I Are — Timbaland featuring Keri Hilson
July 28 – August 17: Crank That (Soulja Boy) — Soulja Boy Tell’em
August 18 – September 21: The Way I Are — Timbaland featuring Keri Hilson (non-consecutive)
September 22 – October 12: Stronger — Kanye West
October 13 – November 2: Crank That (Soulja Boy) — Soulja Boy Tell’em (non-consecutive)
November 3 – November 16: Kiss Kiss — Chris Brown featuring T-Pain
November 17 – December 28: No One — Alicia Keys
December 29, 2007 – January 11, 2008: No One — Alicia Keys (carrying into 2008)

Beyoncé’s Irreplaceable was the best-performing single of the year on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100, having spent eleven weeks at number one across its run. Rihanna’s Umbrella was the defining song of the summer, the moment her commercial dominance became unmistakable. Crank That (Soulja Boy) by a then-17-year-old from Atlanta who had built his following on YouTube made two separate runs at number one and was inescapable from July through October. Alicia Keys closed the year with No One and carried it well into 2008.

Sports Champions of 2007

World Series: The Boston Red Sox swept the Colorado Rockies four games to none, their second championship in four years. The Rockies had won 21 of their final 22 regular-season games and swept both the Phillies and the Diamondbacks in the playoffs, entering the Series on one of the most remarkable hot streaks in postseason history. Boston’s rotation was too much for them. Mike Lowell was named Series MVP.

Super Bowl XLI: The Indianapolis Colts defeated the Chicago Bears 29-17 on February 4, 2007, in Miami. Peyton Manning was named MVP, the culmination of a career that had produced individual statistics without a championship ring until that point. Tony Dungy became the first Black head coach to win a Super Bowl. Lovie Smith, coaching the Bears, was also Black, making it the first Super Bowl with Black head coaches on both sidelines. Prince performed the halftime show in a driving rainstorm, and it remains one of the most celebrated halftime performances in the game’s history.

NBA Champions: The San Antonio Spurs defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers four games to none, in LeBron James’s first Finals appearance. Tony Parker was named Finals MVP. The Spurs were a model of organizational consistency; this was their fourth championship in nine years under Gregg Popovich.

Stanley Cup: The Anaheim Ducks defeated the Ottawa Senators four games to one, the franchise’s first Stanley Cup championship. Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne, both of whom had been acquired as free agents, anchored a roster that had been building toward this result for several years. It was the first Cup won by a California franchise.

U.S. Open Golf: Angel Cabrera of Argentina won his first major at Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, finishing at five over par in conditions that made that score sufficient to win. He became the second Argentine to win a major, after Roberto de Vicenzo at the 1967 Open Championship.

U.S. Open Tennis: Roger Federer won the men’s title and Justine Henin won the women’s. Federer’s U.S. Open victory was his fourth consecutive, extending one of the great runs of dominance in Grand Slam history. Henin, who had briefly retired and returned, was at the peak of her considerable powers.

Wimbledon: Roger Federer won his fifth consecutive Wimbledon title, and Venus Williams won the women’s title, defeating Marion Bartoli in a final that was more competitive than the scoreline suggested.

NCAA Football: LSU won the BCS National Championship in January 2008 for the 2007 season, defeating Ohio State 38-24 in New Orleans. It was the second national championship for LSU under Les Miles. The selection process that produced the Ohio State matchup was contentious, as several other teams had reasonable arguments for inclusion.

NCAA Basketball: Florida repeated as national champion, defeating Ohio State 84-75 in Atlanta. It was the first back-to-back championship since Duke in 1991 and 1992. Joakim Noah was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.

Kentucky Derby: Street Sense, trained by Carl Nafzger, won in a time of 2:02.17. Street Sense had won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile the previous fall and was considered one of the stronger Derby favorites in recent years. He went on to finish third in the Preakness, ending Triple Crown speculation.

Frequently Asked Questions About 2007

Q: What made the original iPhone different from every phone before it?
A: The iPhone eliminated the physical keyboard in favor of a full touchscreen interface, combined a phone, music player, and internet browser in one device, and established the visual and interaction design template that virtually every subsequent smartphone has followed. The original model had no App Store, no front camera, no GPS, and ran on 2G. The App Store launched the following year and completely changed the device’s utility.

Q: What happened with Britney Spears in 2007?
A: On February 16, 2007, Spears entered a hair salon and shaved her own head. The incident occurred during a period of severe personal difficulty that eventually led to a court-ordered conservatorship placing her personal and financial affairs under her father’s control. The media coverage of that period treated what was visibly a mental health crisis primarily as entertainment, a framing that was later widely reconsidered.

Q: Why did the Red Hot Chili Peppers sue Showtime?
A: The band sued after Showtime named a new series Californication, matching the title of their 1999 album. The case was dismissed because the band had never trademarked the name, which is the kind of outcome that tends to generate immediate conversations with intellectual property lawyers.

Q: What was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sales record?
A: It sold 11 million copies in the United States and the United Kingdom in its first 24 hours of release on July 21, 2007, the fastest-selling book in history at that time. It was the seventh and final volume in the series.

Q: What was the Doomsday Clock set to in 2007?
A: The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock from seven minutes to midnight to five minutes in 2007, citing the spread of nuclear weapons technology, the lack of progress on disarmament, and — for the first time in the Clock’s history — the threat of climate change. The adjustment was the first since 2002.

Q: Who won the Super Bowl halftime show in 2007?
A: Prince performed the halftime show at Super Bowl XLI on February 4, 2007, in Miami, in a driving rainstorm. The performance is consistently ranked among the greatest in Super Bowl halftime history. Prince played guitar in the rain under a billowing sheet, backlit to suggest his silhouette, and performed a medley that included “Purple Rain” while actual rain fell. It was a coincidence that he used deliberately and well.

Q: What did Michael Jackson do in response to Eminem’s diss?
A: After Eminem’s 2004 track Just Lose It mocked his appearance and legal difficulties, Jackson purchased the publishing rights to Eminem’s music catalog in 2007, giving himself a financial stake in the recordings that had been used against him. Eminem subsequently acquired his master’s back, but the sequence remains one of the more unusual business responses to a diss record.

In a year that launched the iPhone, closed the book on Harry Potter, watched a NASA astronaut make a 900-mile drive in a diaper, and saw the Weather Channel top a Billboard jazz chart, 2007 suggested that the only reliable prediction about what would happen next was that it would be something nobody had predicted. The Doomsday Clock moved to five minutes to midnight. Steve Jobs moved the phone to his pocket. Both gestures turned out to matter.