2000 wasn't that bad for me. AIM was a decent social network (back then people used their statuses to share what was going on). Mapquest was very competent at p

2000 wasn't that bad for me. AIM was a decent social network (back then people used their statuses to share what was going on). Mapquest was very competent at providing directions. Pirating music was at least as easy it is today (and finding new music was pretty easy too). Yahoo news and many others like it did a great job of aggregating important news. The path to portable music was arguably pretty mature with portable mp3 cd players and minidisc. My university library let us borrow a 2 MP digital camera; sure, we couldn't afford to buy the camera, but I still have 1000s of photos from that camera, many that look fine printed at 4x6 and 8.5x11. The true life changers from the article for me: smartphones with always-on internet (these existed in 2000, but they were overpriced and sucked), laptops + wifi, and wikipedia. Also, amazon - I do almost all my shopping online now.