What has changed since the 90's?
What has changed since the 90's?
For younger people out there, older ones like me have noticed lots of changes in the past few decades. I was born in 1981. For me, the 80's were my first decade and I graduated from high school in 1999. My 20's were the 00's and I turned 30 in 2011. Being a teenager in the late 90's as well as a young twenty something in the 00's, I saw lots of changes in how people live life. This article is my attempt at chronicling some of that.
Cell Phones.
I first saw one of these in the late 80's. The second was in the early 90's. Both were mounted to the car itself and called a car phone. I was told not to touch it because it was a hundred dollars to pick it up. In the mid 90's I remember my mother getting a large hand held phone, but it was more of a fashion accessory than it is today. She only used it when her cool friends were around on the weekend, but it was clear they were getting cheaper. I think she really used it to plan social stuff on the weekends, especially from places other than home. But she didn't use it otherwise. It stayed turned off. I started driving in 97 and she gave it to me, telling me only to use it for emergencies. It was a 911 phone. I never turned it on. She got herself another one that she also did not use. My friends seemed to all have a 911 phone in their new cars. One of them was a bag phone. In 2000, the cell phone plans dropped to less than landlines. Everyone got one of those early candy bar phones. I don't remember anyone using the internal phone number memory since it was honestly more time consuming than just remembering the number. I still remember a lot of numbers from that time. Texting was not a thing. The next year or so I remember a friend getting a flip phone and a girl at college actually being jealous of how cool it looked. It was still more of a fashion accessory than it is today. Today the case is more about fashion than the phone.
By 01, these phones had already changed culture. To plan something with friends before this meant calling a landline. If he wasn't home, then someone would be who would tell you where he was. Usually, you would just go to his place of work at that point to tell him something. In other words, today there's a lot of idle chit chat that takes place via cell phones which only took place in person or via land lines. And in the 90's we used this thing called time. You met people using time. You put a lot of effort into being clear on where and when to meet. Today we constantly reschedule things on the fly.
The other big change is that it is now considered rude not to answer the phone. With landlines you got no answer when the person wasn't home. The machine picked up and they returned the call. In 2002 if I don't pick up it was assumed I am ignoring you and it's considered rude. So if I am talking to someone and you call me, then it's rude that I didn't interrupt a person mid sentence to take a call from you. Over time, people have changed and come to understand that responses to cell phone summons can't be expected to be immediate. Often times people want an answer to a question that can't be answered until more information is gathered, etc.
The internet has changed a lot of things and I only want to list some things that might go unnoticed. Before, most people looked down on watching TV and Movies as a waste of time. Video games were seen as the epitome of this. People who spent all day every day doing these things still gave lip service to this "waste of time" point of view. The internet has allowed people to find other souls that just play games all day on the other side of the world. Slowly, people realized that they were not alone and it went from uncool to cool. Today people brag on social media about having spent hours watching TV. What was once able to make you a lazy loser now makes you some sort of art critic. People even have serious opinions on the subject of movies and subcategories of fan media have emerged. It's hard to imagine the amount of parody videos on youtube being present in the 90's. Many of these seem like just a community that enjoys the films that can now spend all day watching content about it's own enjoyment of the films.
One of the most interesting changes is the rise and fall of atheism. September 11 and the prevalence of the internet happened at about the same time. Where I live, most people got 56K dial up in 1999. Before that, I remember only two other kids having it in 97. Learning how to use email at school was this really annoying thing that I didn't pay attention to. I thought, "How many new things will come out that I have to learn only to be replaced by the next new thing?" We didn't even have internet at school. We just had a computers class that taught us how to use it. Once the internet became a reality, if no one else needed to make a call, then you could go online and look up things that you couldn't before. Atheism seemed to rise out of this. I really feel like this whole thing had been pressed into a dark corner before. I think people converted when they made atheist friends. I still think that's how it works today. But my church experience in the 90's was mostly a call to just have faith and not ask for evidence. Atheism was seen as so strange and weird that people didn't even speak of it. I'm serious. People just didn't mention it. It would have been like mentioning a cult that died out in 1850. Nobody cared. And of course September 11 made the religion of Islam a common household topic. Now everyone was aware of both atheism as well as a religion that teaches people go to hell for believing in Jesus' crucifixion.
Honestly I think this brought Christianity back to its' early days when it confronted a host of other beliefs. And Christian Apologetics rose to the challenge. If anything was less talked about among Christians in the 90's than atheism, then apologetics was one of those things. And yet if you fast forward from 98 to 08, many teens in church had an apologetics Bible! Today the public seems aware that the challenge of atheism has been met with good reasoning from Christians, even if most people don't know the arguments. The whole trend and wave of atheism seems to have fizzled online.
The last thing I want to comment on is social media, although I am aware that I'm leaving out illegal downloading. What interests me about social media is so many things. When I was 13, girls went and got something called "glamour shots" made. Honestly, selfies allow girls to take much better photos today. There was an obvious and immediate upgrade in how girls look in photos. It was clear that they were posing themselves much much much more effectively than before. Even as late as 2003, we were excited to have 24 hour photo development. The posing thing got out of hand. Soon it became all too clear that girls posed so well that you had no idea how they really looked. The epitome of this was the picture taken directly above the head, looking up. This made a girl who was even 30 pounds overweight (or more) look skinny. While this had it's time in the sun, the continuing rise of selfies led to other girls responding with full body shots. The trend died.
Another thing that amazes me is why schools still have year books. Before, if you wanted to see a picture of a pretty girl, then you had to see it in the year book. Either that, or she had to give you a picture of herself. Without scanners and high quality printers either, it's not like you could copy a picture. Plus that would be an awkward request to make of your buddy. Having a picture of a girl usually meant you were a cool dude and you'd be mocked for such a request. Today girls constantly post an infinity of pictures of themselves. The difference is immense. On the flip side, if you wanted people to notice you at school, then the only way they would do so is in person or in the year book. Having an extra picture in some club or sports team meant having an extra presence. Once you turned 16, you could just drive to socialize so things changed as you got older. But it's nothing like that today. I remember a girl in the late 90's who had already graduated from my school. She borrowed my yearbook to basically scope out the younger competition!
And finally social media has made everyone their own propaganda minister. We are all finally subject to the temptations that only famous people on TV dealt with before. There's much more image control via online presence today. I think south park has made a good point on this. Currently we see the online profile as more important than the actual person. In one episode, Butters is asked out by a really ugly girl. He refuses. Then she shows him a photoshopped picture of herself. He gleefully now accepts with pride. His friends mock him for his ugly girlfriend. He shows them the picture. Now they are all jealous. Their girlfriends can't allow this girl to overpower them, so they all go to the gym to get hot bodies. At the gym, all they do is get training in photoshopping themselves. Now they are all hot again, but only in online photos.
My guess is that the next generation of kids will be completely unimpressed with the mere existence of the internet or smart phones. The current generation's kids that grew up with them seem to take pride in them as something earlier generations didn't have. They seem to think that because they have smart phones, they are smarter than everyone who came before them. I think their children will instantly realize that if you cannot filter between what's true and what's false, then the access to information does you no good. It can even make things worse. As the old saying goes:
"Don't read the newspaper and you'll be uninformed. Read the newspaper and you'll be misinformed."
For younger people out there, older ones like me have noticed lots of changes in the past few decades. I was born in 1981. For me, the 80's were my first decade and I graduated from high school in 1999. My 20's were the 00's and I turned 30 in 2011. Being a teenager in the late 90's as well as a young twenty something in the 00's, I saw lots of changes in how people live life. This article is my attempt at chronicling some of that.
Cell Phones.
I first saw one of these in the late 80's. The second was in the early 90's. Both were mounted to the car itself and called a car phone. I was told not to touch it because it was a hundred dollars to pick it up. In the mid 90's I remember my mother getting a large hand held phone, but it was more of a fashion accessory than it is today. She only used it when her cool friends were around on the weekend, but it was clear they were getting cheaper. I think she really used it to plan social stuff on the weekends, especially from places other than home. But she didn't use it otherwise. It stayed turned off. I started driving in 97 and she gave it to me, telling me only to use it for emergencies. It was a 911 phone. I never turned it on. She got herself another one that she also did not use. My friends seemed to all have a 911 phone in their new cars. One of them was a bag phone. In 2000, the cell phone plans dropped to less than landlines. Everyone got one of those early candy bar phones. I don't remember anyone using the internal phone number memory since it was honestly more time consuming than just remembering the number. I still remember a lot of numbers from that time. Texting was not a thing. The next year or so I remember a friend getting a flip phone and a girl at college actually being jealous of how cool it looked. It was still more of a fashion accessory than it is today. Today the case is more about fashion than the phone.
By 01, these phones had already changed culture. To plan something with friends before this meant calling a landline. If he wasn't home, then someone would be who would tell you where he was. Usually, you would just go to his place of work at that point to tell him something. In other words, today there's a lot of idle chit chat that takes place via cell phones which only took place in person or via land lines. And in the 90's we used this thing called time. You met people using time. You put a lot of effort into being clear on where and when to meet. Today we constantly reschedule things on the fly.
The other big change is that it is now considered rude not to answer the phone. With landlines you got no answer when the person wasn't home. The machine picked up and they returned the call. In 2002 if I don't pick up it was assumed I am ignoring you and it's considered rude. So if I am talking to someone and you call me, then it's rude that I didn't interrupt a person mid sentence to take a call from you. Over time, people have changed and come to understand that responses to cell phone summons can't be expected to be immediate. Often times people want an answer to a question that can't be answered until more information is gathered, etc.
The internet has changed a lot of things and I only want to list some things that might go unnoticed. Before, most people looked down on watching TV and Movies as a waste of time. Video games were seen as the epitome of this. People who spent all day every day doing these things still gave lip service to this "waste of time" point of view. The internet has allowed people to find other souls that just play games all day on the other side of the world. Slowly, people realized that they were not alone and it went from uncool to cool. Today people brag on social media about having spent hours watching TV. What was once able to make you a lazy loser now makes you some sort of art critic. People even have serious opinions on the subject of movies and subcategories of fan media have emerged. It's hard to imagine the amount of parody videos on youtube being present in the 90's. Many of these seem like just a community that enjoys the films that can now spend all day watching content about it's own enjoyment of the films.
One of the most interesting changes is the rise and fall of atheism. September 11 and the prevalence of the internet happened at about the same time. Where I live, most people got 56K dial up in 1999. Before that, I remember only two other kids having it in 97. Learning how to use email at school was this really annoying thing that I didn't pay attention to. I thought, "How many new things will come out that I have to learn only to be replaced by the next new thing?" We didn't even have internet at school. We just had a computers class that taught us how to use it. Once the internet became a reality, if no one else needed to make a call, then you could go online and look up things that you couldn't before. Atheism seemed to rise out of this. I really feel like this whole thing had been pressed into a dark corner before. I think people converted when they made atheist friends. I still think that's how it works today. But my church experience in the 90's was mostly a call to just have faith and not ask for evidence. Atheism was seen as so strange and weird that people didn't even speak of it. I'm serious. People just didn't mention it. It would have been like mentioning a cult that died out in 1850. Nobody cared. And of course September 11 made the religion of Islam a common household topic. Now everyone was aware of both atheism as well as a religion that teaches people go to hell for believing in Jesus' crucifixion.
Honestly I think this brought Christianity back to its' early days when it confronted a host of other beliefs. And Christian Apologetics rose to the challenge. If anything was less talked about among Christians in the 90's than atheism, then apologetics was one of those things. And yet if you fast forward from 98 to 08, many teens in church had an apologetics Bible! Today the public seems aware that the challenge of atheism has been met with good reasoning from Christians, even if most people don't know the arguments. The whole trend and wave of atheism seems to have fizzled online.
The last thing I want to comment on is social media, although I am aware that I'm leaving out illegal downloading. What interests me about social media is so many things. When I was 13, girls went and got something called "glamour shots" made. Honestly, selfies allow girls to take much better photos today. There was an obvious and immediate upgrade in how girls look in photos. It was clear that they were posing themselves much much much more effectively than before. Even as late as 2003, we were excited to have 24 hour photo development. The posing thing got out of hand. Soon it became all too clear that girls posed so well that you had no idea how they really looked. The epitome of this was the picture taken directly above the head, looking up. This made a girl who was even 30 pounds overweight (or more) look skinny. While this had it's time in the sun, the continuing rise of selfies led to other girls responding with full body shots. The trend died.
Another thing that amazes me is why schools still have year books. Before, if you wanted to see a picture of a pretty girl, then you had to see it in the year book. Either that, or she had to give you a picture of herself. Without scanners and high quality printers either, it's not like you could copy a picture. Plus that would be an awkward request to make of your buddy. Having a picture of a girl usually meant you were a cool dude and you'd be mocked for such a request. Today girls constantly post an infinity of pictures of themselves. The difference is immense. On the flip side, if you wanted people to notice you at school, then the only way they would do so is in person or in the year book. Having an extra picture in some club or sports team meant having an extra presence. Once you turned 16, you could just drive to socialize so things changed as you got older. But it's nothing like that today. I remember a girl in the late 90's who had already graduated from my school. She borrowed my yearbook to basically scope out the younger competition!
And finally social media has made everyone their own propaganda minister. We are all finally subject to the temptations that only famous people on TV dealt with before. There's much more image control via online presence today. I think south park has made a good point on this. Currently we see the online profile as more important than the actual person. In one episode, Butters is asked out by a really ugly girl. He refuses. Then she shows him a photoshopped picture of herself. He gleefully now accepts with pride. His friends mock him for his ugly girlfriend. He shows them the picture. Now they are all jealous. Their girlfriends can't allow this girl to overpower them, so they all go to the gym to get hot bodies. At the gym, all they do is get training in photoshopping themselves. Now they are all hot again, but only in online photos.
My guess is that the next generation of kids will be completely unimpressed with the mere existence of the internet or smart phones. The current generation's kids that grew up with them seem to take pride in them as something earlier generations didn't have. They seem to think that because they have smart phones, they are smarter than everyone who came before them. I think their children will instantly realize that if you cannot filter between what's true and what's false, then the access to information does you no good. It can even make things worse. As the old saying goes:
"Don't read the newspaper and you'll be uninformed. Read the newspaper and you'll be misinformed."
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