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.
I turned 18 in 1999 and I also had hope, so it wasn’t just kids.
18 year olds are kids.
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.
Climate change was still a “this will be a big problem and we need to do something about it sooner rather than later” issue instead of “actively experiencing and watching the damage and misery on a near daily basis and knowing it will be getting much much worse” reality.
No amount of Captain Planet telling me to separate my recyclables is going to fix this shit.
The water here in the Netherlands has been way too high for weeks now, and we’ve had some crazy ass storms. Even a cyclone or something? I don’t even know what it’s called.
Anyway it’s going to require some crazy engineering if the Netherlands is to move into the 22nd century.
The Netherlands is in an interestingly unique position when it comes to rising sea levels. They’ve been fighting the sea (and winning) for centuries. I’m sure they’ll be at the forefront for engineering future sea incursions.
There recently was an article that discussed about what the Dutch could do. It came down to 3 suggestions:
- Building a dyke across the Waddeneilanden (killing off the entire waddensea but also protecting the rest of the land)
- Raising up the existing dykes and sacrificing cities and villages that are nearby the sea since the dikes really need to become much bigger.
- Giving up whole parts of the Netherlands, building floating cities and relying on higher parts of the country to expand and rebuild there.
What it is going to become, I don’t know but it will be really interesting!
As a fellow Dutchie: I miss the early 90s optimism. Nowadays, people are disillusioned and the hidden bigotry among which I grew up has become explicit up to the point of us having a fascist government.
I also miss not living in a neoliberal dystopia.
I am not sure that both are not connected.
I came back to the nl 2 years ago. I was really surprised! A lot of people complain or suddenly have angry outbursts, even though I have never met that person before. It’s very rude to me and I prefer to have more casual conversations with strangers. It’s like some people are all up in arms about something.
Like OK building a nuclear reactor? Fuck do I know. I have no opinion on the matter. Just do whatever works best. Every solution has its problems and I never read even a single book on it so what would I know. All I know is that electricity prices need attention.
And what you mentioned about people openly being racist and nationalist. It’s awkward to me. I mean they receive social support and their kids go on holidays in Thailand and Aruba multiple times a year, without even having a job in their 30s. Sure there are plenty of issues surrounding migration but it’s an oversimplification and counterproductive, besides simply being unethical, to think that getting rid of a minority is going to solve anything. It just seems like lazy problem solving to me.
And it’s awkward because what are they protecting? If we are protecting Dutch culture, ok I can get on board with that. But what is it? For me the most Dutch thing is tolerance and openness, and being progressive. I think many people worldwide would recognize that as Dutch core values. So it’s just weird to destroy that by trying to protect it.
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.
I miss not having social media and news that, at least generally, tried to be actual news and not ‘JusT ASkinG QUeStioNs’ and disingenuous bullshit. It was a wild ride being on social media almost since its birth, but I think it generally was a huge mistake. Things should have stopped at IRC and UseNet.
Having guys make me mix tapes.
Anyway, this one really cute guy at college had an epic cassette collection and he was also artistically talented so he made custom covers/inserts for each one. The original tape is long gone, but somewhere I still have my favorite cassette cover that also includes the hand-printed play list.
He had other excellent skills, so I eventually married him.
Are you seriously leaving us hanging with ‘other excellent skills’?
Yes! Let your imagination run riot.
Oh my lawd
The ability to take for granted that anything and everything I purchased was owned outright. It couldn’t be taken away, either intentionally or accidentally, in any capacity.
Now everything is all always-online digital licenses, and they can be swapped to monthly subscriptions at a moments notice.I hate having to rent everything. I am thinking about going back to DVDs for movies.
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!
Having no responsibilities
Check out It Follows.
That is a great movie, one of my favorite horror films from the last decade. IDK if you knew, but a sequel is in the works. They start filming next year!
Omg! Hope it has some funky tunes again
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.
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.
