Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-05-12, 17:51:

Things were simple back in the 70’s thru 80’s. You could go home and forget about work. Relax have a refreshment. The 90’s were […]
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Things were simple back in the 70’s thru 80’s.
You could go home and forget about work. Relax have a refreshment.
The 90’s were more hectic but still manageable.

Bring back the Fax Machine. I still have Mine but have not received a fax in a long time and have not been asked to send a fax either.
I have not sent a Fax since 2018.

Deal with the government and you'll get to relive the "Joy" of faxing things. They are also still very popular in the medical industry. I recently had to deal with the state of California diverting some of my tax refund to pay the back registration on this motorcycle, and I had to fill out a form and fax it to them stating that it had been destroyed in the Camp Fire. Saying that turned out to not be good enough; I had to do it again and say it was destroyed in "The Paradise Camp Fire."

TheMobRules wrote on 2022-05-12, 17:49:

Nowadays these things are no longer an "event", it's just about the hype about what's coming next, and as soon as it's there you pretty much have to move on to the next big thing at breakneck speed.

I've genuinely stopped a few times in the last few years and thought 'did that film come out already?'. Then I remembered to not ask questions. Just consume product and get excited for next products. 😉

I think around 1997 was the height of Silicon Valley and computer companies.
Just about all the computer manufactures and software companies had corporate sites in Silicon Valley.
( Intel , iBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, HP, SGI, Novell, Cisco, etc. ) they were all here.
It was an Amazing time to be working in computers.

Video:
https://youtu.be/T0YblbVNPKw

I miss the 90s, too, though the early 21st century wasn't bad either. Personally, it can be fun to look back on the 80s/90s and remember how much better things were then. Companies were clearly hyping/marketing their products even back then, but it was much less obnoxious. If you didn't subscribe to a magazine, you often had no clue what was going on. Even with a magazine subscription, space was limited and so only a handful of games could be covered. It was always exciting to walk into a store and actually browse through the product. I do miss that. I remember when I got my first PC, I went to Sears to check out the games and was shocked to find an "Ultima VII" on the shelf! I had no idea 🤣.

Things really only got really bad with the popularization of social media imo, where social media became the primary means of interaction for a lot of otherwise normal people; I've actually had a "real world" friend ask me once, "you don't like my posts, are we even really friends?"

Having said that, I feel that if we had social media (as it currently is) back in the 90s, things wouldn't have seemed so nice! The entire purpose of social media is to get you upset so that you keep clicking. It wants to generate outrage, because that's what keeps people plugged into it. My advice to anyone feeling depressed about the world of 2022: get off social media and try to live life like you are back in the 90s or early 2000s. Day-to-day life isn't really much different if you go out there and live it. My in-laws don't use social media at all, and for them life today is much the same as it was 15 years ago 🤣.

I do miss the beginning of digital arcade machines in the 80's. My mom would drag me along to go grocery shopping and just inside the door would be a space invaders, defender, galaga, battlezone etc machine I would spend time on.

I miss the feeling that the human species was calmly and rationally working it's way towards better times. I miss the natural social barriers which used to prevent trivial conflict from taking over most discourse. In a way, the internet is a mutation, of the social kind. A sudden massive change, and the species was never the same since. Quite the opposite - the wheels of turmoil seem to be spinning up ever faster, as the connected years progress.

Forums like this can seem like a throwback to the BBS days, when a small group regularly touched base to share and enjoy common interests. A good thing. The wider internet, on the other hand, is like walking into a random large shopping mall and shouting "hey everyone, come here right now and give me your totally raw unqualified opinion on every single thing I do - and I shall then spend the rest of my life looking over the data, and meanwhile, all you shops please run at me at full speed while shoving your products into my face as hard as possible".

Also, I miss video arcades. With the semi- drawback that lowlifes used to hang out at some of them. 🤣 But overall, it was nice that most cities had some normal & accepted public places for videogamers to casually hang out, day-to-day. I'm guessing a higher % of video gaming these days happens mostly shut up in own homes, which in some ways is a shame.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-05-13, 03:56:

The wider internet, on the other hand, is like walking into a random large shopping mall and shouting "hey everyone, come here right now and give me your totally raw unqualified opinion on every single thing I do

This is a good point. If you were walking around one day and some random person walked up to you and said, "your shirt sucks and I hate your haircut" you'd rightly assume they were crazy or maybe looking to start a fight. The best way to interact with social media (other than not interacting at all), is to assume that every single person on there is either trolling or legitimately mentally ill.

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-05-13, 03:13:

Having said that, I feel that if we had social media (as it currently is) back in the 90s, things wouldn't have seemed so nice! The entire purpose of social media is to get you upset so that you keep clicking. It wants to generate outrage, because that's what keeps people plugged into it. My advice to anyone feeling depressed about the world of 2022: get off social media and try to live life like you are back in the 90s or early 2000s. Day-to-day life isn't really much different if you go out there and live it. My in-laws don't use social media at all, and for them life today is much the same as it was 15 years ago 🤣.

I agree, I think general social media breeds discontent and disconnection. I think it's important that the way people communicate on-line should have an outline. For example the reason everyone manages to get along on here, for the most part, is because we have a focus and can filter out discussions that don't belong here. It keeps the community together, for the most part. I think all generic social media should be scrapped in favor of focused forums. It would probably help create a caring community if people got involved for a purpose, not just an extrovert diary to publicly post all your private thoughts.

The internet has also allowed easy access for crazy to find crazy. It used to be impossible because you had to filter through so many sane people in your daily life.

Shagittarius wrote on 2022-05-13, 04:01:

The internet has also allowed easy access for crazy to find crazy. It used to be impossible because you had to filter through so many sane people in your daily life.

Definitely!

I think you summarized the issue with social media perfectly. Social media was not created for a specific purpose (discuss old cars, etc.), but as a means to completely replace human interaction. It's not healthy. No one "wants" to be outraged 24/7, but the algorithms force that content on everyone, because they know it's hard to look away from an accident. It's dangerously close to yelling "fire" in a crowded auditorium imo. Imagine sitting at a restaurant and every five minutes some joker walks by insulting you or ranting about conspiracy nonsense. You'd flip out.

Ironically, a lot of 70s, 80s and 90s content/software/hardware/documentation is accessible now than ever before thanks to the Internet in the last 20 years. Granted, some of it is expensive ang getting rarer and some has possibly fallen off the face of the Earth (software, drivers and docs mainly), but before Ebay, Buyee, etc , I had no practical way to source an MT-32, SC-55, SC-88, MU500, etc in my neck of the woods .

Movie wise, for example, I was recently able to purchase (sourced from Europe) every Michael Sopkiw movie from the 1980s on Blu-Ray and the soundtrack to "2019, After the Fall of New York" on CD only recently . I had been wanting good quality official releases of these since at least the late 90s .

On the hardware front, affordable Raspberry PI-like SBCs and FPGA re-implementations are making miracles happen . More specifically, on the hardware homebrew front, cards like the Orpheus, MK8330 and others are bringing back the best 90s experience, thanks in no small part to the relatively recent trend of accessible and affordable small run contract PCB production .

The past may be gone, but the present allows us to re-live it (and often experience for the first time, for the younger crowd) and learn from it in wonderful ways .

Let us be grateful for the knowledge off what once was, appreciative for what has improved and was gained and ever vigilant/vocal/active about both what needs to be worked towards and what needs to protected and defended for the greater common good .

Nothing will ever be perfect and nothing will truly ever be forgotten if but only one person manages to keep the flame alive in even the darkest of possible ages .

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-05-12, 10:11:

what really hits home is that we are closer to 2050 now than we are to 1980 ...the 80s were 40 years ago.

Let me make this worse for you, we are closer even to 2060 than 1980

...and I still think 10 years ago was when nirvana released nevermind.

Errius wrote on 2022-05-12, 16:14:

The decline of smoking has been accompanied by an increase in weight. These things are probably related. Instead of lung disease people die of heart disease. At least the air is cleaner I suppose.

I suspect the increase in allergies also has to do with the decline in smoking.

I thought the allergies was a mix of pollutants and 'over protecting' children, ie keeping them from developing immune systems fully, plus increasing pollutants of the kind that mess with hormones leading to health problems. We live longer now primarily due to medicine advances, but are not necessarily 'healthier'.

TheMobRules wrote on 2022-05-12, 17:49:

Nowadays these things are no longer an "event", it's just about the hype about what's coming next, and as soon as it's there you pretty much have to move on to the next big thing at breakneck speed.

a great observation - nothing seems to be a significant event, there are dozens of new series out on streaming channels every month it seems, films are released constantly and seem to be on netflix and so on within minutes - its because of the global nature of media. there is just more of everything and the competition is increased. It doesnt compare with the build up of a new movie release back 20+ years ago. The whole media world also competes with youtube and the like. People watch what they like and that's great but in it we lose some of the social anchor points where we all shared the same TV watching habits and so on. Not sure what media nostalgia will be like in the future: "do you remember that time we all watched completely different things apart from eachother?" !

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-05-13, 03:13:

If you didn't subscribe to a magazine, you often had no clue what was going on. ... My in-laws don't use social media at all, and for them life today is much the same as it was 15 years ago 🤣.

information abundance is a thing i really like about these days, but you have to navigate it carefully. An increases portion of the effort of finding something out is evaluating the many sources. Even with simple product info you often have to consider amazon reviews, other site reviews, youtube reviews as well as any workd of mouth you can pick up and do some critical thinking about what is being said to both get to a conclusion and avoid being swamped with 'analysis paralysis'. Back before this there were magazines to read and people to talk to, thats about it. Not nearly as good, but much easier to navigate

great point about social media - in many ways it isn't 'real' and actually can be successfully avoided or used only with the lightest touch

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-05-13, 03:56:

I miss the feeling that the human species was calmly and rationally working it's way towards better times. I miss the natural social barriers which used to prevent trivial conflict from taking over most discourse.

yes indeed, that optimistic and positive sense of purpose of the mid-late 20th century seems gone

in addition to the social barriers there were also the 'unbarriers', we had to get along to some extent with people who disagreed with us - live and let live - we couldn't 'block' them or insist on their silence

The world has gone through many cycles, on macro and local levels.

- Wars
- Revolutions
- Massacres/genocides
- Peace
- Enlightenment
- Obscurantism
- Hope
- Despair
- Fear
- Famines
- Overindulgence
etc

Though, on a global scale, I can't say I feel overly optimistic currently (for the last few years), and I realize we have had the ability to pretty much end it all for decades, not everything is doom and gloom.

I don't want to bring politics and/or religion into this, but I believe that most of us will agree that extremes and echo chambers are dangerous, that respect for the opinions and lives of others should be a given and that trying to find a common ground through respectful and rational discussion is better than pretty much any alternative .

Though things are bleak for many of us and can always get worse for many more or even all of us, the past has shown us that humanity has somehow endured so far and if the past shoukd have taught us anything at all, it is that things can also improve, not just get worse, or we would not be here having this discussion .

When were the US great? The answer we know from the political scientists is: "When I was young."

It's not so much things that I'd miss as things that have emerged since then. Egregious grades of wanton bullshit.
Like the platformisation of almost anything and all the mindless drones of gen Z going along with it, feeling all info elite about being screwed out of the most basic customer service at no reduced cost.
What was wrong with ordering a pizza with a phone call? Having a teller at the bank? A hotline with live humans at the other end, instead of voice recognition and a sentient flow chart?
That all calls for riots, but they fail to happen.

I miss rental video places. It was expensive as hell and a fuking nightmare to remember to return the VHSs in time but me and my brother actually watched the entire Star Trek Voyager show on rental video.

Nowadays everything is so accessable that I can't seem to appreciate movies/shows in the same way as when you had to go through all that trouble..

Joakim wrote on 2022-05-13, 14:39:

I miss rental video places. It was expensive as hell and a fuking nightmare to remember to return the VHSs in time but me and my brother actually watched the entire Star Trek Voyager show on rental video.

Nowadays everything is so accessable that I can't seem to appreciate movies/shows in the same way as when you had to go through all that trouble..

There's definitely something to this! I have a lot of fond memories of renting random movies and games from whatever was available at the local rental shop. Sometimes you'd bring home trash, other times you'd find real gems. You'd sometimes travel around locally just to see what other shops had. I remember getting into horror movies back then, and having to do the work to track down a particular movie I wanted to watch. I'm not saying I want to go back to that, but it also made you more appreciative of what you had/found.

I miss the stock market crash of 1929. So many orphans...

That was a terrible time. Bankers throwing themselves out of high windows. Appalling. Thank god that no longer happens.

Errius wrote on 2022-05-13, 19:43:

That was a terrible time. Bankers throwing themselves out of high windows. Appalling. Thank god that no longer happens.

Who said they threw themselves?

Weird thread derailment... how about we stick to the decades in question.