For me it’s holding a VHS in the store and looking at the cover.
The feeling that things might get better.
There was so much hope, everything was exciting and new. The world was getting better. Though I was <10 for most of the 90’s so maybe it was just being a kid.
What’s to dream about? Living these days feels like being in a game of monopoly where someone started with hotels on every property. The fascists are winning, the planet is burning, we’re in the middle of two wars, the capitalists are talking about putting shock collars on their vault slaves when the apocalypse begins, and all signs point to everything getting worse as time goes on. In light of all this, my dream is dying peacefully in my sleep before the water wars begin and I get pushed into Nestle’s torment nexus to make the stock price go up a fraction of a penny.
For me it was the inspiration I felt from technological improvements. I grew up in a house where my father was a network engineer and would constantly have computers opened up he was tinkering with. And all through the 90s I saw more and more improvements that made me feel like the future would be even more amazing! This persisted well into the 2000s with the coming of social media and small commercial devices like MP3 players, cell phones, etc. It just seemed like everything was improving and that if a company stopped improving, another company would come along and give the people what they want! But now I live in a world where all of the things that used to excite me have betrayed me and anything new I am extremely skeptical of. I see all kinds of new and interesting technological improvements come along and while they seem like excellent ideas that would improve my life, I also see the many ways in which they would exploit me, my privacy, and my money. I would love to have a camera doorbell in which I can see who is at the door and talk to them while I’m not at home, but those devices are horribly insecure and you have to subscribe to their services. I just can’t do it and I wish we could go back to the days in which you could just buy a product that might improve in a few years and you didn’t need to worry about it watching you or costing money every month. Instead you could just be excited about your little gadget and dream about what the next version would be like.
Have you ever looked into options for self hosting doorbell camera data, or the ones that store on the device with SD cards?
I did, due to the same concerns you listed. I found that self hosting would be detrimental to my server’s data drives and reduce their lifespan from the constant activity, and the SD card ones lacked some extremely nice to have features you get from cloud native mobile apps.
Curious if there are viable alternatives that have emerged since then, as it has been a few years since I researched this stuff.
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.
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!
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.
Big box games with proper manuals.
Hope
