Yes, it's good to be cautious against nostalgia, but it's also bad to just pretend that everything just basically repeats. To be clear, since I feel a bunch of

Yes, it's good to be cautious against nostalgia, but it's also bad to just pretend that everything just basically repeats. To be clear, since I feel a bunch of comments are taking that "90s was peak humanity" quote overly literal (another commenter pointed out there were still horrible wars during the 90s), I'd point out that it was about the expectations of how tech would improve human lives. Most specifically, there was a very broad belief that things like the Internet would bring people closer together. But by lots of objective metrics (measures of loneliness, polarization, pessimism for the future, youth mental illness, etc.), not only did tech not "bring us closer together", it actively helped rip us apart. And I think if you time traveled back to the 90s and explained those outcomes, the vast majority of people would be genuinely shocked and surprised.