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> more optimistic view people had of tech at the time vs today. Probably because there was yet not that much weaponized targeted advertising, brain rot content

> more optimistic view people had of tech at the time vs today. Probably because there was yet not that much weaponized targeted advertising, brain rot content, and social media designed to make you consume content all day that gives you non-stop dopamine, then makes you feel depressed about yourself. Tech was more of an extra tool to aid life IRL, and hadn't yet completely absorbed and replaced IRL entertainment and interactions. It was easier to separate and limit your on-line activity from your daily life than today without the feeling that you're missing out. The online presence was all about niche online communities, games, forums, bulleting boards, and chat groups, instead of all being absorbed into Subreddits that gamify your engagement for upvotes to sell it to investors and advertisers. Consumer PC hardware at that time was mature and reliable enough to not require a PhD or make you hate using it, but still progressing quite fast to make you excited about the next OS, video games, CPUs and GPUs(back when people could actually afford them). It was a wild transitional period for tech, from 32bit CPUs to 64bit, DirectX 8 to 9 to 10, single core CPUs to multi-core, some of the best movies, videogames and franchises launching in that period, instead of all being sequels, rehashes, reboots and remakes of old franchises like today. It was a great time to be alive and whatness all that, hence the optimism you mentioned. Oh, and all videogames (and SW in general) shipped as "Gold" on discs, fully finished, tested and patched, no bullshit broken preorder cash-grabs needing the famous zero-day patches to work as advertised, treating their customers as beta-testers, plus half the game being sold to you as an extra DLC six months later.

anthk 3y ago
>wild transitional Not even close to the huge shift from 1989 to 1999.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Meh, PCs weren't so mainstream in consumers' homes back then, it was still more a thing for businesses and nerds, as the tech was quite limited for entertainment and HW still quite expensive for the casual user. Yes hardware progress was fast, but it was also quite expensive and difficult to set up and use, a lot of the times buggy and with compatibility issues, and it would get outdated far too quickly[1] to the point you'd spend a fortune on a new GPU which would be obsolete in a year and the company would go bankrupt in 2 years, leaving you with no games that would support it anymore, turning you expensive GPU in a worthless paperweight. It was rough being a a consumer back then unless you were loaded to afford keeping up with the upgrades and stomaching the teething issues and quick obsolescence. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHIz97L2iI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHIz97L2iI
  - anthk 3y ago
    OTOH, you could browse the web with Lynx just fine in 2004, post into Slashdot, read most of tech sites seamlessly and even by 2011 you could download full albums from Jamendo/Magnatune and the like. Nowadays you need a Core Duo as a bare minimum for JS ridden sites in order to read something if Lynx/Linsk doesn't work with a fake UA like the PSP one in order to enforce the basic article mode for some overused CMS.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  True, but as PC and Internet adoption increased, more people were exposed and have nostalgia and memories of the period. The mid-to-late 90's also had a high level of techo-optimism, but I feel there was still a lot more mainstream skepticism that this all this technology would actually be useful which had mostly gone away by mid 2000. I just saw a bit with Bill Gates on Letterman about early Internet audio streaming where the reaction was "have you heard of radio?"
eternityforest 3y ago
It was such an amazing time. Everyone always points to tech differences and tries to do stuff like Gemini, but the tech stack isn't the main problem. The big problem is the Internet was a reflection of real life, now it's largely just a reflection of more internet. Scroll all day, post, sleep, repeat... Doesn't leave much time to create anything worth scrolling, and the stuff that is gets lost in the sea of low effort shit posts. The software doesn't help, but mostly because of the UX. The actual tech is fine. Stuff is fast and batteries last 12 hours. We don't need simple lightweight versions of what we have, we need pagination, proboards-style UIs with large signatures and avatars, and to go do more stuff aside from endless fussing with tech stacks.

anthk 3y ago

>wild transitional Not even close to the huge shift from 1989 to 1999.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Meh, PCs weren't so mainstream in consumers' homes back then, it was still more a thing for businesses and nerds, as the tech was quite limited for entertainment and HW still quite expensive for the casual user. Yes hardware progress was fast, but it was also quite expensive and difficult to set up and use, a lot of the times buggy and with compatibility issues, and it would get outdated far too quickly[1] to the point you'd spend a fortune on a new GPU which would be obsolete in a year and the company would go bankrupt in 2 years, leaving you with no games that would support it anymore, turning you expensive GPU in a worthless paperweight. It was rough being a a consumer back then unless you were loaded to afford keeping up with the upgrades and stomaching the teething issues and quick obsolescence. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHIz97L2iI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHIz97L2iI
- anthk 3y ago
  OTOH, you could browse the web with Lynx just fine in 2004, post into Slashdot, read most of tech sites seamlessly and even by 2011 you could download full albums from Jamendo/Magnatune and the like. Nowadays you need a Core Duo as a bare minimum for JS ridden sites in order to read something if Lynx/Linsk doesn't work with a fake UA like the PSP one in order to enforce the basic article mode for some overused CMS.
kalleboo 3y ago
True, but as PC and Internet adoption increased, more people were exposed and have nostalgia and memories of the period. The mid-to-late 90's also had a high level of techo-optimism, but I feel there was still a lot more mainstream skepticism that this all this technology would actually be useful which had mostly gone away by mid 2000. I just saw a bit with Bill Gates on Letterman about early Internet audio streaming where the reaction was "have you heard of radio?"

eternityforest 3y ago

It was such an amazing time. Everyone always points to tech differences and tries to do stuff like Gemini, but the tech stack isn't the main problem. The big problem is the Internet was a reflection of real life, now it's largely just a reflection of more internet. Scroll all day, post, sleep, repeat... Doesn't leave much time to create anything worth scrolling, and the stuff that is gets lost in the sea of low effort shit posts. The software doesn't help, but mostly because of the UX. The actual tech is fine. Stuff is fast and batteries last 12 hours. We don't need simple lightweight versions of what we have, we need pagination, proboards-style UIs with large signatures and avatars, and to go do more stuff aside from endless fussing with tech stacks.