To think the 90's/early 2000's was when we peaked and everything has gone downhill since due to technology

[SonnyHoney]

To think the 90s/early 2000s was when we peaked and everything has gone downhill since due to technology.

Bear in mind I was only a child/teen then (mid 30s now).
There was just the right amount of technology.
People just seemed happier.

I wish I could have raised my children in a similar environment to what my mother raised me in.

Another decline is entertainment; music, film and TV. There seems to be very little creativity and new ideas anymore. They just churn out same tired format.

There's evidence that the numbers of children doing those things have increased since the 80s/90s?

It depends on which area of AI. There are areas it's useful and others it's actually worse than useless and is causing problems. Not to mention the amount of electricity needed to run the servers. It is going to push energy costs through the roof which is going to cause catastrophic poverty in the US.

Chatgpt will run out of money next year.

So a definite bubble but also definitely will be a thing for the future too.

Disagree. It's just harder to find in the sheer amount of content being produced.

I suppose a little similar to the .com crash? The Internet didn't go away, after all.

Yep. Exactly that.

With lots of fun and games as a result.

Surprised nobody has mentioned global warming yet. Back in 2012 - that golden Olympic summer many people including me remember fondly - it still felt realistic that we could turn the tide just by installing a few more solar panels or recycling plastic bottles. The more brutal effects hadn’t started to kick in yet and the hotter summers felt lovely, not ominous. Now it’s clearer that if we all do a little, we will only achieve a little, and that things will get a lot more uncomfortable in the future. It has hit home lately that awful summers where without aircon people die are going to become the norm, particularly in the SE of England. Not something I look forward to.

Hmmm. Attitude is important too, and we can still turn the tide. Every tenth of a degree is worth fighting for. However, we might not see the results of this in our lifetimes, and on a smaller scale we need to be looking at climate mitigation measures such as how we design our built environment.

I don't. I think the late 90s early 2000s were the best time in so many ways and I was in my 30s and 40s then. They were optimistic, energetic times.

Definitely. Technology, and in particular social media, has wrecked lives. No wonder young people can’t/won’t go out or get a job when at the touch of a button, they can communicate with friends, order a meal to be delivered, play games etc etc. No, life isn’t better. Email and the internet was okay back then, but now there’s way too much ‘influencing’ and all the crap that goes with it. Sorry, but I feel strongly about this.

We were scared of being nuked by the Russians back then. Also, parents were afraid that rock music would turn all of us into demon-worshipping lunatics.

Yes it has.

But man I love technology. I was bored a hell of a lot of the time.

For me i loved the 1970s and 1980s, also the 1990s. Life was slower, fun, we were more independent and creative, sociable, patient because we had to be! As a middle aged adult I do value the positives of technology as it does help a lot to make life and keeping in touch easier.

I feel grateful to have experienced life before and after the technological revolution but do think growing up in the last couple of decades it has made kids less resilient, people have become more hermit like, less value attached to items. Xx

Forgot to add, if you did shit at school, you had to go on a YTS scheme which paid 30 quid a week. My friend would get all the shit jobs like scraping the stickers of the storefront windows. She also got called the N word a lot, and nobody batted an eyelid.

I've been thinking this lately.

My own mental health was a mess, but the world was so much simpler. It felt like we had more in common in the old days, society was much more harmonious.

Yes, people still moaned, but there wasn't the nihilistic, existential dread that we all seem to have now. There has been nothing to be positive about, no optimism for so long now. All the problems like housing costs, high taxation, falling fertility rates, international wars, seem to keep getting worse.

I’m so sick of the endless need for passwords, counter passwords, special PIN codes and verifications. To do the simplest things.

Search facilities are getting worse and worse too.

This technology, based on connected computers, is not fit for purpose. It is too vulnerable. How much longer can it actually last??

I can assure you, they are.

Yeah. I watched the take that documentary on Netflix yesterday. Very evocative of those times.

I’m a similar age to you OP. For me I remember so much optimism mid- late 90s around girl power, Brit pop, pure happiness ringing in the millennium! 9/11 seemed to send shockwaves and then the barrage of terror attacks and threats that happened… and it seemed to just kind of knock the joy out of the world 😕

It’s Islamic terrorism and the internet. Without them we’d all be in a happier place.

As I get older, I am constantly on guard against romanticising the past. There are so many things today that I’m grateful for. It’s amazing to be able to order a book from anywhere in the world, watch YouTube videos, listen to podcasts on anything that interests me, and turn to AI Mode for help and advice. I am very excited about advances in medicine as well, especially nanobots and drugs to slow and reverse ageing. AI itself is now inventing new drugs, and this is just the beginning.

We can’t stop technological advance. All we can do is embrace the positive bits.

Falling fertility rates might be a good thing. In 1900 there were a billion humans. By 1960 that had trebled to three billion. It’s now eight billion and heading for ten. And the birth rates aren’t falling everywhere. Africa’s birth rate is so high the African population is going to double - just as climate change is getting worse.

Oh ffs, EVERYONE had empires. Arabs, Mughals, Ottomans, Aztecs, Zulus, Incas, Mayans, Russians, Persians, the list goes on and on. Yuval Harari writes that most humans since the beginning of history have lived within or under an empire. The empire is older and more natural to us than the nation state. Modern China is an empire (just ask a Tibetan or a Uyghur Muslim).

All you can do is compare them. And whatever its faults, the British Empire banned slavery across the globe and used its navy to enforce that ban. In fact, many African and Arab people fought against Britain because they wanted to continue a slave trade that had existed since the dawn of time. In the 1840s and 1850s Britain nearly went to war with the USA because British ships were stopping American ships and freeing the slaves. We aren’t taught this, because it goes against the globalist project of making British people reject their own culture and history and identity.

Had the British Empire never existed, there would be no USA, no Australia, no Canada and no New Zealand, not as we know them today. Instead, we’d live in a world dominated by Putin, China, and Iran.

‘Employment was ok’ in the 90s? Wrong. Highest unemployment in lots of regions. So much negativity in this.

Absolutely, I was a teenager in the mid 1990's and I feel sorry that my 16 year old DD isn't experiencing the same youth as I did. Great times. Having said that those who experienced the 1960's 70's and 80's would probably think the 1990's were rubbish.