For me it’s holding a VHS in the store and looking at the cover.
The feeling that things might get better.
There was so much hope, everything was exciting and new. The world was getting better. Though I was <10 for most of the 90’s so maybe it was just being a kid.
Don’t you have any dreams?
What’s to dream about? Living these days feels like being in a game of monopoly where someone started with hotels on every property. The fascists are winning, the planet is burning, we’re in the middle of two wars, the capitalists are talking about putting shock collars on their vault slaves when the apocalypse begins, and all signs point to everything getting worse as time goes on. In light of all this, my dream is dying peacefully in my sleep before the water wars begin and I get pushed into Nestle’s torment nexus to make the stock price go up a fraction of a penny.
Do you have someone to talk to?
For me it was the inspiration I felt from technological improvements. I grew up in a house where my father was a network engineer and would constantly have computers opened up he was tinkering with. And all through the 90s I saw more and more improvements that made me feel like the future would be even more amazing! This persisted well into the 2000s with the coming of social media and small commercial devices like MP3 players, cell phones, etc. It just seemed like everything was improving and that if a company stopped improving, another company would come along and give the people what they want! But now I live in a world where all of the things that used to excite me have betrayed me and anything new I am extremely skeptical of. I see all kinds of new and interesting technological improvements come along and while they seem like excellent ideas that would improve my life, I also see the many ways in which they would exploit me, my privacy, and my money. I would love to have a camera doorbell in which I can see who is at the door and talk to them while I’m not at home, but those devices are horribly insecure and you have to subscribe to their services. I just can’t do it and I wish we could go back to the days in which you could just buy a product that might improve in a few years and you didn’t need to worry about it watching you or costing money every month. Instead you could just be excited about your little gadget and dream about what the next version would be like.
Have you ever looked into options for self hosting doorbell camera data, or the ones that store on the device with SD cards?
I did, due to the same concerns you listed. I found that self hosting would be detrimental to my server’s data drives and reduce their lifespan from the constant activity, and the SD card ones lacked some extremely nice to have features you get from cloud native mobile apps.
Curious if there are viable alternatives that have emerged since then, as it has been a few years since I researched this stuff.
Big box games with proper manuals.
Omg remember riding home reading the manuals and your fantasy going wild?
…and fabric maps, and tchotchkes, and code wheels.
Hope
😞
No cell phones
My wife and I are increasingly convinced that we, humanity, peaked in the 90s. We had conquered acid rain. We were removing CFCs. The internet was coming in, so were mobile phones (but only to call and text, so you could stay in touch but escaped the trap of a million cameras around us), the music was so incredibly broad (Brit pop, grunge, spice girls, dance … it was like the world’s biggest buffet), the high street was still doing fine, TV had great shows (Seinfeld, X-files etc) and everyone just seemed a damn sight happier than today since misery-communities hadn’t formed on the internet to celebrate and refine their misery.
It was a simpler time. And all powered by a healthy western economy and the declaration of a (naive) victory in the Cold War.
Peak delusion as well. We basically believe everything on TV. I think the 90s in western countries were just more mild, but not objectively better. Now everything is extreme, both much worse and much better.
That’s what they said in The Matrix, isn’t it? 1999: the peak of human civilization. At the time, the future looked bright, but in the grand scheme of things, it hasn’t played out as we hoped.
The bright colors. Something has changed and suddenly neon jackets and shirts were available. It felt very optimistic and futuristic. Everything was briefly neon. It was glorious.
It was not long after that pants got huge and clothing got dark, subtle, and depressed. Like everyone wants to be an adult and not an easy target for the random gunmen.
Shit. School shootings weren’t a thing. I miss that not being a thing.
Neon all of the things!
Fresh episodes of X-Files and Star Trek: TNG every week.
Just that whole experience of something on television being a cultural zeitgeist because everyone had to watch it at the exact same time because that was the only time it existed. Sure, you could record it on VHS and watch later, but it wasn’t the same. Even being at home watching alone felt like participating in a social event.
Are you into strange new worlds?
Ya that thing about TV being a ritual is something I heard before from someone. Interesting perspective.
Having no responsibilities
Check out It Follows.
IRC.
ICQ
Catalogues. Totally different feeling than online shopping. You could explore them for hours. No need to wait for a good offer, because the price does not change.
The internet. Web2.0 made everything worse with trackers and three companies running almost everything.
Big box games, especially the ones with the “board game” style boxes.
CRTs (mainly because of what they represent).
Point-and-click adventure games (thanks Myst).
Game/movie rental stores.
Malls.
In general, I miss the fact that the 90s (and early 2000s) had the internet, but the internet wasn’t developed enough to replace physicality. As we’ve grown more dependent on the internet, we’re losing physicality. Our games are digital, our music is digital, our TV shows, movies, news, socialization, everything is becoming digital. We own less and less because companies don’t have to offer a physical product anymore. We dreamed of 3d malls that we’d browse with friends in virtual reality; but we got text and images instead. Our malls have no form, neither physical or virtual, the worst of both worlds. We no longer have a chance at physicality, even in a virtual sense, because doing so is a waste of resources. Why build a virtual mall when a webpage will suffice?
Somehow music is fighting back against the loss of physicality and is winning with records, CDs and yes, even cassettes. I hope eventually we make a return to physicality and can learn from this obsession with the digital and non-physical.
What did you mean exactly with what CRTs represent? They just make me think of that electron gun thing and their weight and never fitting on a desk.
And about those 3d malls, can you tell me anything more about that fantasy? Did you mean you could buy physical products there or only digital?
CRTs are heavy and cumbersome. As such, they represent computers at a time when the majority of PCs were stationary and couldn’t be hauled around. Sure, there were laptops and cellphones, but those were limited in functionality and weren’t a real replacement for a desktop PC like they are now.
As for virtual malls, I remember there being lots of noise made, especially surrounding the internet, about virtual worlds where you could hang out with your friends or go shopping. The idea being that it was a virtual replacement for a physical location; you could buy physical and virtual goods at these imaginary virtual malls. They just… never came into being. Instead of 3d environments that let you socialize and shop, you have flat webpages that only serve to sell you goods.
Have you ever tried second life?
Yeah, but the fact that literally everything had to be bought was off-putting. I do like vrchat though, and I’ve been meaning to try out Resonite.
OS/2 Warp
BeOS
What did you do on there besides visit the warp center.
For me it’s holding a VHS in the store and looking at the cover.
Yeah - that’s a good one. Our local store had a Friday night deal: 5 weekly rentals for 10 bucks, or something. We’d go order fish and chips, then go argue over which 5 movies to rent, while our dinner was cooking.
Although I shouldn’t, I miss my shitty old Datsun sometimes. Easy to diagnose problems, simple to get into and fix, with minimal tools required. No tech - just mechanical and electrical.
Nostalgia’s a funny thing. Lots of things I get wistful for, but they’ve been replaced by (arguably) more convenient things:
- Having to call your mate’s house at a specific time, because you know he has footy training and won’t be home to answer before that time
- Waiting until specific times of night to watch your favourite TV shows or listen to your favourite radio DJs
- The massive zip-up carry case for all my cassette tapes, to play in the car
- 6-way link-up Daytona arcade racing
- Loading my computer games from multiple floppy discs (X-Tree Gold macros for the win!)
Then there’s things that I miss, because now I have to adult:
- Sleeping in on weekends
- Work I don’t have to take home with me
- Being able to stay out stupidly late on Friday and Saturday nights
- Getting absolutely shitfaced on those nights, without worrying about the hangover
- Eating a bag of chips and calling it dinner, because there’s no one else you need to feed
Daytona racing looks ace! And waiting for fish and chips while picking 5 movies, jeez that’s the cheese!
