3 ms·

Umm, I think people who say things like "20+ years..." haven't been paying attention to the change in rate of large scale social change over the last few decade

• maxerickson 9y ago
  There were people not using cell phones in 1997 because of the privacy implications. I guess they were making some assumptions that they would likely apply to modern tech.
• waqf 9y ago
  Well, The Simpsons in 2000 predicted President Trump. And I'm not exactly sure what surprises you about the NSA, I think many civil-liberties groups in 1997 would have been happy to talk your ear off about their (reasonable or unreasonable) surveillance concerns.
• wil421 9y ago
  The things you mentioned are so insignificant I doubt there will be more than a section about them in the history books. In 1997 the EU was only 4 years old! Clinton was using submarines to tap undersea cables. AOL was connecting households around the country. I don't agree that these changes are large scale compared to 20 years ago. Looks like the cycle is repeating itself and only the names have changed.
• muninn_ 9y ago
  Sure, but the idea that all of a sudden we aren't going to have MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Google, Facebook, and all these other world-class, leading institutions because of 4 years of Trump is nonsense. If we had 4 years of Trump for 5x as long, then yeah maybe it would start. But that's not going to happen.