Cosmic Microwave Background: Past, Future, and Present

Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) carry an enormous amount of information about the early universe. The anisotropy spectrum depends sensitively on close to a dozen cosmological parameters, some of which have never been measured before. Experiments over the next decade will help us extract these parameters, teaching us not only about the early universe, but also about physics at unprecedented energies. We are truly living in the Golden Age of Cosmology. One of the dangers of the age is that we are tempted to ignore the present data and rely too much on the future. This would be a shame, for hundreds of individuals have put in countless [wo]man-years building state-of-the-art instruments, making painstaking observations at remote places on and off the globe. It seems unfair to ignore all the data that has been taken to date simply because there will be more and better data in the future. In this spirit, I would like to make the following claims: