By Tomek Jankowski
The year was 1996: Alanis Morissette and the Smashing Pumpkins dominated radio—we still listened to radio back then—while your Internet 1.0 experience began when your dial-up modem screeched for 20 seconds and then connected you to your AOL account. You had mail! It was in that year that Episode 7 of the fourth season of the popular SciFi drama The X-Files aired, during which a conspiracy was laid bare in a secret meeting by powerful men:
CIGARETTE-SMOKING MAN: What I don't want to see is the Bills winning the Super Bowl. As long as I'm alive, that doesn't happen.
JONES: That'll be tough. Buffalo wants it bad.
CIGARETTE-SMOKING MAN: So did the Soviets in '80.