No event of 1995 â?? a watershed year in ways serious and substantial â?? was as hyped and contrived as Microsoftâ??s late August launch of the Windows 95 computer operating system.
As I discuss in my forthcoming book, 1995: The Year the Future Began, the launch was preceded by weeks of unrelenting advertising and marketing hoopla. Not since â??the first landing on the moon â?? or, at any rate, since the last Super Bowl â?? has America been more aflutter,â? a U.S.-based correspondent for Londonâ??s Independent newspaper observed on the eve of the launch.
So successful was Microsoftâ??s pre-launch campaign that Windows 95 had become a topic of conversation even among computer illiterates, the Washington Post pointed out.
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