11 ms·

I often ask people: “if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or 2021, which would you pick?” An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Some people even ask to go b

I often ask people: “if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or 2021, which would you pick?” An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Some people even ask to go back to the seventies. This article explains why I would much rather be young now rather than before.

hiddencache 5y ago
Nevermind came out in 91, and it did feel like the beginning of something...
- creaturemachine 5y ago
  This was the first thing that came to mind. Rock & Roll may have died in this decade but the innovation of the 90's made it worth it. I fear for 2031 once the tik tok-ification of music has run its course.
ghaff 5y ago
There are a lot of things that younger people in particular take for granted today that were basically not available in 1990. I occasionally think that if I had to go back to 1990 and do my job as a product manager, I'd probably quit in frustration over just not having the information I needed to do my job.
- everdrive 5y ago
  But you'd only be competing against other similarly hampered project managers. Depending on how well you worked without the modern internet, you'd simply find your same place in the bell curve.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Well, sure. It would just be incredibly frustrating. As would lack of information generally.
nivenkos 5y ago
'91 would be better though - better salaries in a lot of jobs, and lower house prices. GPS on the phone is awesome, but I'd still prefer financial security.
- ghaff 5y ago
  >better salaries in a lot of jobs Factory jobs that is probably true in general--though you're still into the period when a lot of traditional union manufacturing jobs were leaving (or had left) the country. As an engineer/software developer, you're probably going to be paid about $40K for an entry-level position [ADDED: For the US at a "tech" company]. And there is basically no equivalent to routine FAANG SWE salaries. Housing is cheaper (relatively) in some locations although the Bay Area was still relatively expensive. Manhattan was considered the high-priced place to live at the time.
  - nivenkos 5y ago
    My entry level software job was $35k in 2015 in London! Outside the US, jobs across the board paid a lot more before 2008.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    There are many factory jobs today and companies have a difficult time filling them. They are not the monotonous, repetitive jobs of assembly line work (that has been outsourced) but rather involve some skill that you'll be taught. But it's hard to find people to fill these roles as qualified candidates in many cases think the jobs are below them (college educated but can't find work in their field) or they simply don't want to show up every day and work. Many people today choose lifestyle centered work (gig economy, part time roles for short term, etc) rather than work that lets them build a life. I have multiple friends that have gone this route out of high school with no college and started at the bottom and have over the years acquired more skills and knowledge and some have moved into supervisory and management roles after their companies financed some additional skills like using spreadsheets, basic management, etc. The endless stories of people that start, work a week and get a check, don't show for 2 weeks and then come back thinking they are still employed is amazing. The jobs exist and they pay well, but not enough people want them.
BrianOnHN 5y ago
Definitely depends on race. As a white guy '91 would have been easy sailing.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  Being a white guy in 2021 is easy sailing.
  - BrianOnHN 5y ago
    I 100% agree. I was mostly referring to the fact that '91 was more difficult for other races, genders, and sexualities.
  - whitepaint 5y ago
    https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
    - light_hue_1 5y ago
      Oh my! Poor white people. White people live on average 77 years white black people live 72 years on average. The HORROR! The white man's burden to have more money and live longer! Truly the catastrophe of the 21st century.
      - BuckRogers 5y ago
        Wow. You clearly are not connected with the broader white community, even if you're white yourself. Or just too young to see reality yet. I'm from the midwest, which removes a lot of the privilege on the coasts, normal people live here, not nearly as many silver spoons and generational wealth. Opioid and suicide death is through the roof compared to decades before. I knew many people personally that are now gone. If you hate white people, you should be very happy in 2021. Because as the backbone of America by default as the majority, they're under assault by corporate America to squeeze them for everything they're worth. Whether that's reducing their wages through offshore labor or effects of NAFTA, or by default as the majority group pushed pain pills by unscrupulous docs and big pharma. Your generalization may be reality in your area, if you go outside at all and not just reading regurgitated politically motivated crap online. But I'm not seeing it on the ground, in the broad swaths of middle America.
Clubber 5y ago
1991. Less Orwellian. Back then, 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual.
- alexshendi 5y ago
  Today, 1984 feels like an Utopia.
- ggreer 5y ago
  In 1991, distributing encryption software was a violation of US munitions controls.[1] At the time, it was not at all clear whether encryption software would remain legal for individuals to own and use. The US government was considering mandating backdoors in all consumer encryption, culminating in the development of the Clipper chip.[2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States#PC_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
thundergolfer 5y ago
Going to be another person commenting that they'd seriously consider 1991 (as long as I had the smarts to still go into software). Jump back to 1991 as a 20yr old and head to the recruitment fair stalls of Sun Microsystems / DEC / Apple / Adobe / Microsoft. Google search and showers that stay hot are pretty nice, but the relative difficulty of accessing quality education, jobs, and housing probably turn out to be much more significant as you exit your 20s in 2031 and think about starting a family.
- namdnay 5y ago
  Now I could understand this as a blue collar worker, but you’re saying you’d prefer to be a software engineer in 91 than 2021? Come on, of pretty much all the professions were the ones who have reaped the most benefits of the past 30 years
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Arguably in 1991, you're getting in on the ground floor but it's a mixed bag. Your new grad salary is probably going to be around $40K or so in the US. And dot-bomb is 10 years in the future. And that list of companies is sort of a mixed bag. Adobe has mostly done pretty well through the years. Sun Microsystems did have a very good decade through the dot-com years but then didn't. Apple was really struggling at that time. DEC was on the way down and would be bought by HP a few years later. Microsoft was about to launch Windows NT so that was a pretty good place to hop on but obviously went on to have a long period of stagnation.
    - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
      Indeed it predates my entrance to the industry by a half-decade but one thing that's notable about this period is the technology stacks being built during it would in large part be heavily de-emphasized later when the web exploded. If you were at Apple, you'd be working on a platform (Mac OS classic, or Copland, or Newton) that would be thrown away by the end of the decade. If you were working at DEC, likewise. (VMS, VAX, even Alpha) Sun is more complicated, as they pivoted better and took longer to die. That would be a good place to be maybe. 1991 is an awkward year since it's about 2-3 years before the HTTP/browser revolution. One thing though is that to my eye when I look at what these companies were working on then, it all seems more interesting to me now. The actual employment of a programmer (who wasn't stuck in finance or insurance etc. doing COBOL) had the potential to do some stuff that we at least thought Was going to be groundbreaking back then. NewtonOS and Alpha and Copland, CORBA, PowerPC/PREP, OS/2, research projects like Sun's "Self", etc. it was all exciting stuff. Just very little of it went on to be used later.
jasode 5y ago
>I often ask people: “if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or 2021, which would you pick?” An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Some people even ask to go back to the seventies. There's a podcast by Jason Feifer (was called Pessimists Archive) where the repeated theme across many episodes is the recurring fallacy of the "good ole days": https://www.jasonfeifer.com/build-for-tomorrow/ https://www.jasonfeifer.com/build-for-tomorrow/ E.g. you ask today's generation and they say the "good old days" was 1991; but if you ask those in 1991 what the good old days were, they wouldn't say "right now!" ... they'd say 1970s. And if you ask those in 1970s... they'd say... (you get the point). So the conclusion is either... - the true good old days after connecting the survey across centuries was actually the prehistoric cave man days of hunting & gathering ... or ... - every generation repeats the rose-colored glasses narrative because we bias the past with positive memories and the bias the present with negative current events
- ghaff 5y ago
  That's one of the themes in the film Midnight in Paris. (Yes, it's a Woody Allen film.)
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  A 3rd option is society (or parts of society) can go through rough patches where 30 years before year X was better than year X + 30. Trajectories for different populations within the society can differ themselves and so individuals will have varying answers.
- __s 5y ago
  Alternatively, it's a bit of Future Shock I grew up in the 90s, & maybe I'd do better as a 20 year old in 1991 rather than 2031 (too young to say 20 in 2021; I've succeeded already close enough to there), but I'd rather grow up in the 2000s than grow up in the 80s There's a kind of arbitrage, where if I could take my technical abilities from 2010 back to 1990, I'd probably do pretty well. I'm not so sure about taking those abilities to 2030. So you need to frame your question more clearly: at what age does the time travel occur? For simplicity I assume the only age you've given: 20. If it's about when we're born, then that's a completely different human being
- 5y ago
technothrasher 5y ago
I was 20-years old in 1991. It was good.
- mech422 5y ago
  yeah - I enjoyed it...
bennyp101 5y ago
I was 7 then, and just getting into computers - playing with BASIC on the CPC464) so being 20 then would have been awesome, although I’d be proper old now ;)
- mech422 5y ago
  sigh So I'm 'proper old' now ? :-P When can I be 'improper old' ?? :-D
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I'll take 91. I get to experience all the exciting personal computing technology again before it all becomes web appliances and dark patterns. Back when the internet, if you could get it, was a place of wonder instead of terror.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  If you are going back Marty, there are a few timelines I’d like altered.
  - version_five 5y ago
    Fun fact is that the alternate 1985 in Back to the Future II where Biff ran Hill Valley was actually based on what it would be like with Donald Trump (as the sleazy casino developer) in charge.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  In '91 nothing followed you around. You could go to prison in Tennessee and Arkansas wouldn't be able to find out without a cop or two putting in a days work and making phone calls. People would get arrested, give a fake name, plead and do time, and be released without their identity ever being verified. Young adults in 2021 are hopelessly trying to outrun that time they tweeted a slur when they were 12.
- unnouinceput 5y ago
  Do you have kids? Sounds like you don't. All people would go back in time until they become parents. After that, faced with the harsh reality that going back in time would alter your decisions hence not getting the same kids, they, admittedly begrudgingly, back off.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  If 1991 why not 1919? You'd want the world transition from the horse age to the space age. It might be a good while yet beforw we see any new changes as profound as that one. Okay I guess I'd rank crispr as highly. But the list of changes that profound is short.
nemo44x 5y ago
2021 if only for the health improvements without trying: - You grew up in an era of not inhaling cancerous smoke everywhere you go - Even unhealthy foods are less unhealthy due to removing hydrogenated fats from foods (god were they tasty though) - Cars are safer than ever - The environment is cleaner than it has been in decades The past always looks better. People still want to return to the 50's and most of them were not alive then. However, I believe every generation has had it "better" generally speaking than the previous and that's how it should be. Certain era's had things that were probably better but this era has things that future generations will envy as well while also having it "better" generally speaking. Today is this best time to be alive and I'm optimistic tomorrow will be even better.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >You grew up in an era of not inhaling cancerous smoke everywhere you go A recent study (2013) suggests that the idea that second hand smoke has a direct link to cancer wasn't entirely accurate. https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/105/24/1844/2517805 https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/105/24/1844/2517805 >Even unhealthy foods are less unhealthy due to removing hydrogenated fats from foods I would say food is far more unhealthy today than in 1991. There is sugar and bastardized sugar in everything. Sugar is addictive and food manufacturers use it to get people addicted to their food. Instead of eating for nutrition, people eat for that sugar hit, and you almost can't escape it. Try finding prepackaged foods in the grocery store without some form of sugar in it. https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/sugar-addiction/ https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/sugar-addiction/
rufus_foreman 5y ago
I'm trying to imagine being back in the late 80's living in the squat or in the animal house I lived in during the early 90's and having this guy time travel back to tell us about the future. "You mean we don't all die in a nuclear war or from AIDS or global warming?" "No, the future is much better! Riding lawn mowers are cheaper, teddy bears are much more cuddly and silky, board games have been revolutionized and you can get goat cheese at Walmart!"
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  It might go a little something like this: https://sfdebris.com/videos/special/timewalker2020.php https://sfdebris.com/videos/special/timewalker2020.php
wolverine876 5y ago
The political dangers are orders of magnitude worse now, plus there is climate change (a product of the same political problems). I'll take 1991, but without this future. Also, IME, the culture has become hateful, poisonous, and based on trauma, despair, and survival rather than hope and dreams, freedom and self-actualization.
- devnull3 5y ago
  > I'll take 1991, but without this future. May be with memory wipe of currently what you know and the way the world is
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
I was in my early 20s in 1991, and I'd easily pick 2021. The 1990s were a great time to have as my formative period, and it was fun to ride the web from gopher to mobile. But the 2020s are going to be a transformational decade too, with a lot to learn and experience, and a ton of opportunities. Far more chaotic than the 1990s, but honestly that suits me personally. I thrive on that. I would pick the 90s over the 2000s or 2010s though. Well, I'd go back to the 2010s and buy even more bitcoin than I did, but other than that, I could skip that decade.
inglor_cz 5y ago
For a sexually active 20 y.o., 1971 was probably better than 1991. The threat of HIV had an enormous chilling effect on the casual dating scene.
anticodon 5y ago
Destruction of the USSR in 1991 gave a boost to the Western economies by eliminating a strong competitor and opening a new huge market. While you enjoyed your life in 1991, people around me literally died of hunger, because Gorbachev and Yeltsin and their advisors from USA killed almost all the industry on the former USSR territory overnight. People lost jobs, people lost savings, people lost meaning of life overnight. It's a biggest case of genocide since 1940s, that is silenced and undocumented.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  The USSR destroyed itself. It was bankrupt by 1989: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/22/world/soviets-foresee-budget-deficit-of-162-billion.html https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/22/world/soviets-foresee-bud...
seniorThrowaway 5y ago
That's almost an unfair comparison. I don't know how old you are but 1991 was an incredibly optimistic time in western history with the fall of communism in Europe. Maybe a closer comparison would be 2000 vs 2019, both years right before a big global event.
- saltcured 5y ago
  Overly simplifying my memories as a west coast US teenager in that era, the very late 1980s were a time of cautious optimism with news such as the solidarity movement in Poland and the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, 1989 in many ways felt like the peak. Soon after, such global optimism was soured by the Gulf War, Serbian civil war, etc. We weren't as aware or focused on other positive changes that may have been happening elsewhere. Edit to add: in many ways, the apparent close of the Cold War just removed that one bilateral threat from center attention. In its place, we gained a new awareness of much more fragmented conflict scattered all over the world...
RegBarclay 5y ago
I was 23 in 1991. It was OK, but just yesterday I was talking with a twentysomething guy who was playing for me a song he'd written using GarageBand on his phone. I told him, man, I wish I'd had YouTube and GarageBand when I was his age. It's really hard to say what I'd do. I'd probably not change anything. I've noticed that computer technology isn't really anything special to my kids. I'm not sure I would have taken up an interest in programming as a youth in 2021 as I did in the 80s and 90s.
BuckRogers 5y ago
I'm going 91. I was there. I wasn't 20, but I was closer to 10. And 10 years old in decades past is about equal to 20 years old today, we experienced more. We had more freedom, we made more mistakes. More of us were likely beaten/raped/killed or otherwise died.. but we simply were less childlike, the generations that had analog childhoods. Less coddling. That was more true the further back you go, but there was a steep decline for children born around 1990 or after due to many factors. At least that's what I've observed. Those quality of life improvements on that list are in reality pretty sad compared to the loss in social cohesion and quality of life in ways that matter more. You would think we didn't have indoor plumbing or antibiotics. We were in good shape. But the difference in pre and post 9/11 America is stark. This place was basically ruined on a social level, pure fear and panic, and it remains in different forms. Now if you asked me if I'd rather be born in 1971 or 2021? I would say 2021. Because the last 20 years have been throwaway decades. Someone 20 years old in 2021 missed ALL of the good times, never saw America as it was, and has and will spend most of their life behind the 8 ball. If you're born today, while there could definitely be more calamity, there's a good chance things turn up from the malaise of 2001-2021 in the next two decades. At least as it pertains to the working class. Which is most of us. Its been a great two decades for those that were running the show. But there's a reason why overall sentiment is and has been negative. I'll take 20 in 1991, or 20 in 2041. But not 20 in 2021.
- icedchai 5y ago
  I honestly feel this same way about the past 20 years. You captured it so well.
bambataa 5y ago
I’d pick 20 in 1991 just to be there for the original rave scene!
titzer 5y ago
The more I think about this, the more I realize that you pick almost any time in history and if you were wealthy and powerful, it was freaking awesome. Can you imagine what the life of a Roman Caesar was like? Or a Rockefeller or Windsor? Similarly for life at the bottom. In almost any period in history, life at the bottom sucked hard.
jrsj 5y ago
I’d just like to go just far enough back to not be around for WW2 so I have to spend the least amount of time in the 21st century as possible. So I guess stick me in 1946.
seanc 5y ago
I was in my 20's in the 90's. It's tough to say. On the one hand I feel like I was the last generation to take a mid-level software salary and pay off a degree and a "short commute" detached house before I was 40. On the other hand, since I was in my 20's in the 90's I was a young child in the 70's and 80's when nerds were to be bullied, gay people were to be beaten, and God help you if you were Trans. That's still the case in much of the world, but looking at how my kids grew up, vastly improved since then. So as a nerd, yes, the 90's were probably better for 20 year old me, but the 10's were definitely better for the 10 year old me.
jjav 5y ago
> An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Not so incredible I guess. I was 20 in '91 so can relate. Computers and the internet were seriously exciting at the time, uncommercialized and pure hacker culture of exploration. We were building technology because it was exciting. The concept of building adware or spyware didn't exist. Today a startup going to "make the world a better place" is a sitcom joke, back then it was truly the feeling.
- icedchai 5y ago
  Yes, I feel the same way. I was only 15 back in 1991, but was involved with BBSes, Usenet, early ISPs, etc. The "early commercial Internet" years (1991 - 1996 or so) were so much fun.

hiddencache 5y ago

Nevermind came out in 91, and it did feel like the beginning of something...

creaturemachine 5y ago
This was the first thing that came to mind. Rock & Roll may have died in this decade but the innovation of the 90's made it worth it. I fear for 2031 once the tik tok-ification of music has run its course.

ghaff 5y ago

There are a lot of things that younger people in particular take for granted today that were basically not available in 1990. I occasionally think that if I had to go back to 1990 and do my job as a product manager, I'd probably quit in frustration over just not having the information I needed to do my job.

everdrive 5y ago
But you'd only be competing against other similarly hampered project managers. Depending on how well you worked without the modern internet, you'd simply find your same place in the bell curve.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Well, sure. It would just be incredibly frustrating. As would lack of information generally.

nivenkos 5y ago

'91 would be better though - better salaries in a lot of jobs, and lower house prices. GPS on the phone is awesome, but I'd still prefer financial security.

ghaff 5y ago
>better salaries in a lot of jobs Factory jobs that is probably true in general--though you're still into the period when a lot of traditional union manufacturing jobs were leaving (or had left) the country. As an engineer/software developer, you're probably going to be paid about $40K for an entry-level position [ADDED: For the US at a "tech" company]. And there is basically no equivalent to routine FAANG SWE salaries. Housing is cheaper (relatively) in some locations although the Bay Area was still relatively expensive. Manhattan was considered the high-priced place to live at the time.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  My entry level software job was $35k in 2015 in London! Outside the US, jobs across the board paid a lot more before 2008.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  There are many factory jobs today and companies have a difficult time filling them. They are not the monotonous, repetitive jobs of assembly line work (that has been outsourced) but rather involve some skill that you'll be taught. But it's hard to find people to fill these roles as qualified candidates in many cases think the jobs are below them (college educated but can't find work in their field) or they simply don't want to show up every day and work. Many people today choose lifestyle centered work (gig economy, part time roles for short term, etc) rather than work that lets them build a life. I have multiple friends that have gone this route out of high school with no college and started at the bottom and have over the years acquired more skills and knowledge and some have moved into supervisory and management roles after their companies financed some additional skills like using spreadsheets, basic management, etc. The endless stories of people that start, work a week and get a check, don't show for 2 weeks and then come back thinking they are still employed is amazing. The jobs exist and they pay well, but not enough people want them.

BrianOnHN 5y ago

Definitely depends on race. As a white guy '91 would have been easy sailing.

moron4hire 5y ago
Being a white guy in 2021 is easy sailing.
- BrianOnHN 5y ago
  I 100% agree. I was mostly referring to the fact that '91 was more difficult for other races, genders, and sexualities.
- whitepaint 5y ago
  https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
  - light_hue_1 5y ago
    Oh my! Poor white people. White people live on average 77 years white black people live 72 years on average. The HORROR! The white man's burden to have more money and live longer! Truly the catastrophe of the 21st century.
    - BuckRogers 5y ago
      Wow. You clearly are not connected with the broader white community, even if you're white yourself. Or just too young to see reality yet. I'm from the midwest, which removes a lot of the privilege on the coasts, normal people live here, not nearly as many silver spoons and generational wealth. Opioid and suicide death is through the roof compared to decades before. I knew many people personally that are now gone. If you hate white people, you should be very happy in 2021. Because as the backbone of America by default as the majority, they're under assault by corporate America to squeeze them for everything they're worth. Whether that's reducing their wages through offshore labor or effects of NAFTA, or by default as the majority group pushed pain pills by unscrupulous docs and big pharma. Your generalization may be reality in your area, if you go outside at all and not just reading regurgitated politically motivated crap online. But I'm not seeing it on the ground, in the broad swaths of middle America.

Clubber 5y ago

1991. Less Orwellian. Back then, 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual.

alexshendi 5y ago
Today, 1984 feels like an Utopia.
ggreer 5y ago
In 1991, distributing encryption software was a violation of US munitions controls.[1] At the time, it was not at all clear whether encryption software would remain legal for individuals to own and use. The US government was considering mandating backdoors in all consumer encryption, culminating in the development of the Clipper chip.[2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States#PC_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

thundergolfer 5y ago

Going to be another person commenting that they'd seriously consider 1991 (as long as I had the smarts to still go into software). Jump back to 1991 as a 20yr old and head to the recruitment fair stalls of Sun Microsystems / DEC / Apple / Adobe / Microsoft. Google search and showers that stay hot are pretty nice, but the relative difficulty of accessing quality education, jobs, and housing probably turn out to be much more significant as you exit your 20s in 2031 and think about starting a family.

namdnay 5y ago
Now I could understand this as a blue collar worker, but you’re saying you’d prefer to be a software engineer in 91 than 2021? Come on, of pretty much all the professions were the ones who have reaped the most benefits of the past 30 years
- ghaff 5y ago
  Arguably in 1991, you're getting in on the ground floor but it's a mixed bag. Your new grad salary is probably going to be around $40K or so in the US. And dot-bomb is 10 years in the future. And that list of companies is sort of a mixed bag. Adobe has mostly done pretty well through the years. Sun Microsystems did have a very good decade through the dot-com years but then didn't. Apple was really struggling at that time. DEC was on the way down and would be bought by HP a few years later. Microsoft was about to launch Windows NT so that was a pretty good place to hop on but obviously went on to have a long period of stagnation.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    Indeed it predates my entrance to the industry by a half-decade but one thing that's notable about this period is the technology stacks being built during it would in large part be heavily de-emphasized later when the web exploded. If you were at Apple, you'd be working on a platform (Mac OS classic, or Copland, or Newton) that would be thrown away by the end of the decade. If you were working at DEC, likewise. (VMS, VAX, even Alpha) Sun is more complicated, as they pivoted better and took longer to die. That would be a good place to be maybe. 1991 is an awkward year since it's about 2-3 years before the HTTP/browser revolution. One thing though is that to my eye when I look at what these companies were working on then, it all seems more interesting to me now. The actual employment of a programmer (who wasn't stuck in finance or insurance etc. doing COBOL) had the potential to do some stuff that we at least thought Was going to be groundbreaking back then. NewtonOS and Alpha and Copland, CORBA, PowerPC/PREP, OS/2, research projects like Sun's "Self", etc. it was all exciting stuff. Just very little of it went on to be used later.

jasode 5y ago

>I often ask people: “if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or 2021, which would you pick?” An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Some people even ask to go back to the seventies. There's a podcast by Jason Feifer (was called Pessimists Archive) where the repeated theme across many episodes is the recurring fallacy of the "good ole days": https://www.jasonfeifer.com/build-for-tomorrow/ https://www.jasonfeifer.com/build-for-tomorrow/ E.g. you ask today's generation and they say the "good old days" was 1991; but if you ask those in 1991 what the good old days were, they wouldn't say "right now!" ... they'd say 1970s. And if you ask those in 1970s... they'd say... (you get the point). So the conclusion is either... - the true good old days after connecting the survey across centuries was actually the prehistoric cave man days of hunting & gathering ... or ... - every generation repeats the rose-colored glasses narrative because we bias the past with positive memories and the bias the present with negative current events

ghaff 5y ago
That's one of the themes in the film Midnight in Paris. (Yes, it's a Woody Allen film.)
lotsofpulp 5y ago
A 3rd option is society (or parts of society) can go through rough patches where 30 years before year X was better than year X + 30. Trajectories for different populations within the society can differ themselves and so individuals will have varying answers.
__s 5y ago
Alternatively, it's a bit of Future Shock I grew up in the 90s, & maybe I'd do better as a 20 year old in 1991 rather than 2031 (too young to say 20 in 2021; I've succeeded already close enough to there), but I'd rather grow up in the 2000s than grow up in the 80s There's a kind of arbitrage, where if I could take my technical abilities from 2010 back to 1990, I'd probably do pretty well. I'm not so sure about taking those abilities to 2030. So you need to frame your question more clearly: at what age does the time travel occur? For simplicity I assume the only age you've given: 20. If it's about when we're born, then that's a completely different human being
5y ago

technothrasher 5y ago

I was 20-years old in 1991. It was good.

mech422 5y ago
yeah - I enjoyed it...

bennyp101 5y ago

I was 7 then, and just getting into computers - playing with BASIC on the CPC464) so being 20 then would have been awesome, although I’d be proper old now ;)

mech422 5y ago
sigh So I'm 'proper old' now ? :-P When can I be 'improper old' ?? :-D

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

I'll take 91. I get to experience all the exciting personal computing technology again before it all becomes web appliances and dark patterns. Back when the internet, if you could get it, was a place of wonder instead of terror.

lostlogin 5y ago
If you are going back Marty, there are a few timelines I’d like altered.
- version_five 5y ago
  Fun fact is that the alternate 1985 in Back to the Future II where Biff ran Hill Valley was actually based on what it would be like with Donald Trump (as the sleazy casino developer) in charge.
pessimizer 5y ago
In '91 nothing followed you around. You could go to prison in Tennessee and Arkansas wouldn't be able to find out without a cop or two putting in a days work and making phone calls. People would get arrested, give a fake name, plead and do time, and be released without their identity ever being verified. Young adults in 2021 are hopelessly trying to outrun that time they tweeted a slur when they were 12.
unnouinceput 5y ago
Do you have kids? Sounds like you don't. All people would go back in time until they become parents. After that, faced with the harsh reality that going back in time would alter your decisions hence not getting the same kids, they, admittedly begrudgingly, back off.
Jeff_Brown 5y ago
If 1991 why not 1919? You'd want the world transition from the horse age to the space age. It might be a good while yet beforw we see any new changes as profound as that one. Okay I guess I'd rank crispr as highly. But the list of changes that profound is short.

nemo44x 5y ago

2021 if only for the health improvements without trying: - You grew up in an era of not inhaling cancerous smoke everywhere you go - Even unhealthy foods are less unhealthy due to removing hydrogenated fats from foods (god were they tasty though) - Cars are safer than ever - The environment is cleaner than it has been in decades The past always looks better. People still want to return to the 50's and most of them were not alive then. However, I believe every generation has had it "better" generally speaking than the previous and that's how it should be. Certain era's had things that were probably better but this era has things that future generations will envy as well while also having it "better" generally speaking. Today is this best time to be alive and I'm optimistic tomorrow will be even better.

Clubber 5y ago
>You grew up in an era of not inhaling cancerous smoke everywhere you go A recent study (2013) suggests that the idea that second hand smoke has a direct link to cancer wasn't entirely accurate. https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/105/24/1844/2517805 https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/105/24/1844/2517805 >Even unhealthy foods are less unhealthy due to removing hydrogenated fats from foods I would say food is far more unhealthy today than in 1991. There is sugar and bastardized sugar in everything. Sugar is addictive and food manufacturers use it to get people addicted to their food. Instead of eating for nutrition, people eat for that sugar hit, and you almost can't escape it. Try finding prepackaged foods in the grocery store without some form of sugar in it. https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/sugar-addiction/ https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/sugar-addiction/

rufus_foreman 5y ago

I'm trying to imagine being back in the late 80's living in the squat or in the animal house I lived in during the early 90's and having this guy time travel back to tell us about the future. "You mean we don't all die in a nuclear war or from AIDS or global warming?" "No, the future is much better! Riding lawn mowers are cheaper, teddy bears are much more cuddly and silky, board games have been revolutionized and you can get goat cheese at Walmart!"

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
It might go a little something like this: https://sfdebris.com/videos/special/timewalker2020.php https://sfdebris.com/videos/special/timewalker2020.php

wolverine876 5y ago

The political dangers are orders of magnitude worse now, plus there is climate change (a product of the same political problems). I'll take 1991, but without this future. Also, IME, the culture has become hateful, poisonous, and based on trauma, despair, and survival rather than hope and dreams, freedom and self-actualization.

devnull3 5y ago
> I'll take 1991, but without this future. May be with memory wipe of currently what you know and the way the world is

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

I was in my early 20s in 1991, and I'd easily pick 2021. The 1990s were a great time to have as my formative period, and it was fun to ride the web from gopher to mobile. But the 2020s are going to be a transformational decade too, with a lot to learn and experience, and a ton of opportunities. Far more chaotic than the 1990s, but honestly that suits me personally. I thrive on that. I would pick the 90s over the 2000s or 2010s though. Well, I'd go back to the 2010s and buy even more bitcoin than I did, but other than that, I could skip that decade.

inglor_cz 5y ago

For a sexually active 20 y.o., 1971 was probably better than 1991. The threat of HIV had an enormous chilling effect on the casual dating scene.

anticodon 5y ago

Destruction of the USSR in 1991 gave a boost to the Western economies by eliminating a strong competitor and opening a new huge market. While you enjoyed your life in 1991, people around me literally died of hunger, because Gorbachev and Yeltsin and their advisors from USA killed almost all the industry on the former USSR territory overnight. People lost jobs, people lost savings, people lost meaning of life overnight. It's a biggest case of genocide since 1940s, that is silenced and undocumented.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
The USSR destroyed itself. It was bankrupt by 1989: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/22/world/soviets-foresee-budget-deficit-of-162-billion.html https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/22/world/soviets-foresee-bud...

seniorThrowaway 5y ago

That's almost an unfair comparison. I don't know how old you are but 1991 was an incredibly optimistic time in western history with the fall of communism in Europe. Maybe a closer comparison would be 2000 vs 2019, both years right before a big global event.

saltcured 5y ago
Overly simplifying my memories as a west coast US teenager in that era, the very late 1980s were a time of cautious optimism with news such as the solidarity movement in Poland and the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, 1989 in many ways felt like the peak. Soon after, such global optimism was soured by the Gulf War, Serbian civil war, etc. We weren't as aware or focused on other positive changes that may have been happening elsewhere. Edit to add: in many ways, the apparent close of the Cold War just removed that one bilateral threat from center attention. In its place, we gained a new awareness of much more fragmented conflict scattered all over the world...

RegBarclay 5y ago

I was 23 in 1991. It was OK, but just yesterday I was talking with a twentysomething guy who was playing for me a song he'd written using GarageBand on his phone. I told him, man, I wish I'd had YouTube and GarageBand when I was his age. It's really hard to say what I'd do. I'd probably not change anything. I've noticed that computer technology isn't really anything special to my kids. I'm not sure I would have taken up an interest in programming as a youth in 2021 as I did in the 80s and 90s.

BuckRogers 5y ago

I'm going 91. I was there. I wasn't 20, but I was closer to 10. And 10 years old in decades past is about equal to 20 years old today, we experienced more. We had more freedom, we made more mistakes. More of us were likely beaten/raped/killed or otherwise died.. but we simply were less childlike, the generations that had analog childhoods. Less coddling. That was more true the further back you go, but there was a steep decline for children born around 1990 or after due to many factors. At least that's what I've observed. Those quality of life improvements on that list are in reality pretty sad compared to the loss in social cohesion and quality of life in ways that matter more. You would think we didn't have indoor plumbing or antibiotics. We were in good shape. But the difference in pre and post 9/11 America is stark. This place was basically ruined on a social level, pure fear and panic, and it remains in different forms. Now if you asked me if I'd rather be born in 1971 or 2021? I would say 2021. Because the last 20 years have been throwaway decades. Someone 20 years old in 2021 missed ALL of the good times, never saw America as it was, and has and will spend most of their life behind the 8 ball. If you're born today, while there could definitely be more calamity, there's a good chance things turn up from the malaise of 2001-2021 in the next two decades. At least as it pertains to the working class. Which is most of us. Its been a great two decades for those that were running the show. But there's a reason why overall sentiment is and has been negative. I'll take 20 in 1991, or 20 in 2041. But not 20 in 2021.

icedchai 5y ago
I honestly feel this same way about the past 20 years. You captured it so well.

bambataa 5y ago

I’d pick 20 in 1991 just to be there for the original rave scene!

titzer 5y ago

The more I think about this, the more I realize that you pick almost any time in history and if you were wealthy and powerful, it was freaking awesome. Can you imagine what the life of a Roman Caesar was like? Or a Rockefeller or Windsor? Similarly for life at the bottom. In almost any period in history, life at the bottom sucked hard.

jrsj 5y ago

I’d just like to go just far enough back to not be around for WW2 so I have to spend the least amount of time in the 21st century as possible. So I guess stick me in 1946.

seanc 5y ago

I was in my 20's in the 90's. It's tough to say. On the one hand I feel like I was the last generation to take a mid-level software salary and pay off a degree and a "short commute" detached house before I was 40. On the other hand, since I was in my 20's in the 90's I was a young child in the 70's and 80's when nerds were to be bullied, gay people were to be beaten, and God help you if you were Trans. That's still the case in much of the world, but looking at how my kids grew up, vastly improved since then. So as a nerd, yes, the 90's were probably better for 20 year old me, but the 10's were definitely better for the 10 year old me.

jjav 5y ago

> An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Not so incredible I guess. I was 20 in '91 so can relate. Computers and the internet were seriously exciting at the time, uncommercialized and pure hacker culture of exploration. We were building technology because it was exciting. The concept of building adware or spyware didn't exist. Today a startup going to "make the world a better place" is a sitcom joke, back then it was truly the feeling.

icedchai 5y ago
Yes, I feel the same way. I was only 15 back in 1991, but was involved with BBSes, Usenet, early ISPs, etc. The "early commercial Internet" years (1991 - 1996 or so) were so much fun.