For me it’s holding a VHS in the store and looking at the cover.
No automated self serve checkouts.
Perhaps. Stores used to have an employee take your shopping list, and go fetch all of the products off of the shelves for you. As I understand it, Piggly-Wiggly pioneered a new method, making the customers go fetch everything in their grocery stores, in order to save money on wages.
We got used to doing the store employees’ job on that one, so we’ll probably get used to the self-checkout, too.
Born in the early 80s, the 90s been my youth. Reading through the comments here I realize there’s nothing I miss from the 90s. Every single thing mentioned here has either been replaced by something better, or isn’t gone in the first place.
Fresh episodes of X-Files and Star Trek: TNG every week.
Just that whole experience of something on television being a cultural zeitgeist because everyone had to watch it at the exact same time because that was the only time it existed. Sure, you could record it on VHS and watch later, but it wasn’t the same. Even being at home watching alone felt like participating in a social event.
Climate change was still a “this will be a big problem and we need to do something about it sooner rather than later” issue instead of “actively experiencing and watching the damage and misery on a near daily basis and knowing it will be getting much much worse” reality.
No amount of Captain Planet telling me to separate my recyclables is going to fix this shit.
The water here in the Netherlands has been way too high for weeks now, and we’ve had some crazy ass storms. Even a cyclone or something? I don’t even know what it’s called.
Anyway it’s going to require some crazy engineering if the Netherlands is to move into the 22nd century.
As a fellow Dutchie: I miss the early 90s optimism. Nowadays, people are disillusioned and the hidden bigotry among which I grew up has become explicit up to the point of us having a fascist government.
I also miss not living in a neoliberal dystopia.
I am not sure that both are not connected.
I came back to the nl 2 years ago. I was really surprised! A lot of people complain or suddenly have angry outbursts, even though I have never met that person before. It’s very rude to me and I prefer to have more casual conversations with strangers. It’s like some people are all up in arms about something.
Like OK building a nuclear reactor? Fuck do I know. I have no opinion on the matter. Just do whatever works best. Every solution has its problems and I never read even a single book on it so what would I know. All I know is that electricity prices need attention.
And what you mentioned about people openly being racist and nationalist. It’s awkward to me. I mean they receive social support and their kids go on holidays in Thailand and Aruba multiple times a year, without even having a job in their 30s. Sure there are plenty of issues surrounding migration but it’s an oversimplification and counterproductive, besides simply being unethical, to think that getting rid of a minority is going to solve anything. It just seems like lazy problem solving to me.
And it’s awkward because what are they protecting? If we are protecting Dutch culture, ok I can get on board with that. But what is it? For me the most Dutch thing is tolerance and openness, and being progressive. I think many people worldwide would recognize that as Dutch core values. So it’s just weird to destroy that by trying to protect it.
The Netherlands is in an interestingly unique position when it comes to rising sea levels. They’ve been fighting the sea (and winning) for centuries. I’m sure they’ll be at the forefront for engineering future sea incursions.
There recently was an article that discussed about what the Dutch could do. It came down to 3 suggestions:
- Building a dyke across the Waddeneilanden (killing off the entire waddensea but also protecting the rest of the land)
- Raising up the existing dykes and sacrificing cities and villages that are nearby the sea since the dikes really need to become much bigger.
- Giving up whole parts of the Netherlands, building floating cities and relying on higher parts of the country to expand and rebuild there.
What it is going to become, I don’t know but it will be really interesting!
Watching the birth of the general public internet that everyone has access to.
I remember the early 90s hearing people talk about it, then seeing signs of it in the mid 90s. We all thought it was going to make the world so much better for everything and everyone.
Then starting in the late 90s everyone was getting online and it just went crazy.
It was exciting to be around for the start of it all.
We got to live life without an internet and then all of sudden it was here and we couldn’t live without it.
It was like being the generation that saw the first airplanes and commercial aviation becoming part of the world.
The internet … I’ve mentioned this before and whenever I suggest the internet started in the 90s, I get corrected that technically it was started in the 80s or even the 70s. I’m talking about the general internet that the public interacted with, the internet in the 90s that we all know and understand, the internet with cat memes and porn.
