Comment by epolanski
3 days ago
Maybe you're too young to remember the kind of vibe and optimism that people rode in the 90s.
Felt like everything was going to be better, like we humans were going to be better. More peace, no apartheid, no Soviet union, removing borders between countries in Europe, tech felt like a way to connect us.
In fact, I invite you to re read your entire post. You post achievements in conveniences as major milestones for human progress, but...people have never read as little as they do today, never went to so few concerts as today, or the movies and the average adult in US spends less than 4 hours socializing (including both family and friends) per week, that's less than half the quote of the 90s which was already less but not as significantly.
I started getting online in around 1996 for whatever that’s worth.
> You post achievements in conveniences as major milestones for human progress
A careful reader will note that I did not do this.
You didn't explicitly call your examples major milestones of human progress but you did use rather trite examples of consumer capitalism as a counter example to my disappointment at the lackluster end game of 20th century techno-futurism.
As other commenters have stated the techno-futurist vision that comes out of the Whole Earth Catalog was radically utopian and far grander then "I get to watch low value consumer media whenever I want."
I’d say dirt cheap solar panels and CRISPR based vaccines are pretty cool. I’m also quite optimistic about the proliferation of plausible SMR designs. That new concrete that self heals and sequesters carbon is cool too.
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