Who Else Remembers 1999?
A tech-innovation-fueled economy boomed!
Only 25% of United States citizens had the internet, and those who did were probably running their free AOL minute discs. America Online used ‘90s junk mail to absolutely cover the country with those shiny, mirrored compact discs. You couldn’t escape them; they littered every corner, every drawer, and every trash bin of your home. However, all those CDs helped drive AOL’s estimated worth to a whopping $222 billion by the end of the 20th century. And back in 1999, people only spent about 7 hours per week online—yes, I said per week, not per day! I challenge you to check your phone right now and see what your weekly average is.
There wasn’t any social media in the ‘90s, so the term “doomscrolling” didn’t exist. However, that didn’t stop anyone from obsessing over checking their pager. We all knew where the nearest payphone was. That was unless you were a bougie business person—then you were probably carrying a Nokia by now. It’d be a few more years before they were in the majority of pockets.
Gaming was as big as ever, and one of its giants was about to fall because it may have just been a bit too innovative for people. Sega released the Dreamcast this year with one of the greatest marketing strategies ever: 9.9.99. It was the first home console ever to ship with a built-in 56k modem, allowing it to connect to the web. Can you imagine not connecting to the web now? Well, back then there weren’t enough yeses to make it work, and this console eventually killed Sega’s ambition to stay in the hardware market. I would like to say that I was one of those folks who did buy a Dreamcast—and while it wasn’t out until 2000, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is still the GOAT!
However, as great as all of this was… there was definitely anxiety in the air over what was to come in this new millennium.
What Were Some of the Fears?
It was hard to get away from the conversation about the world ending at midnight. Many were fearful that computers wouldn’t know what to do or that they might think it was “year zero,” causing a complete collapse in software. People worried the world would be left vulnerable to attack, planes would fall from the sky, or all the money in their bank accounts would essentially disappear.
I know this might sound a little out there with today’s understanding, but those fears were real. And if you just read that thinking it was outlandish, you have no idea what some others were fearful of! There were people out there who thought we were just a bit of food for the machine and we just didn’t know it yet. If you were one of those people—I’m not saying this was me... I mean maybe it could have been, but I wouldn’t admit to it—and by “those people,”I mean the ones who saw The Matrix way too many times and were convinced that by midnight the machines would come out, and there would be no Neo choosing to take the red pill, awakening to the “real world,” and rising to the hero’s call to save us all.
What Were We Looking Forward To?
While many were nervous about what the dawn would bring, plenty were optimistic for the new millennium and the technological innovation it promised. There was a promise of instant knowledge: ask the internet a question, and the answer would come back in a flash! While that hope would almost come true, we, in our innocence, didn’t expect the answers to come with far too much regularity built on bias, manipulation, and intentional rage bait. I can still remember in college all of our books being scanned into the database on our campus in the hopes that we could easily read a digital book. Now, those books have been fed into AI, and that human element seems to be long forgotten.
Massive publications like Popular Science promised an era of free online ordering and free, long-distance video calls (remember when long-distance was a concern?). The future promised a technological democratization. Maybe we all believed these things would be easily accessed, but the Covid-19 shutdown showed this country just how many families didn’t have the resources to provide reliable internet to their children, and a new reading crisis was born.
I wish this future would come, and maybe we will still see a more open-source and egalitarian future after the AI bubble bursts. I am still hopeful that when we are face-to-face with the machine doing all of the work, we, as a society, will find value in humanity once more. Alas, for now, that future exists only in the minds of optimists.
Hey, at least these days my Xbox is safely plugged into The Matrix—I mean, the internet—so regardless of whether I take the blue pill or the red pill, I’m having a good time. Plus, I have enough Ramen noodles and Twinkies hoarded away in my pantry to survive the Rise of the Machines (yes, I’m aware that I am pulling that reference from another movie… that’s just the kind of guy that I am).
So, what about you? What do you have hoarded away in case the machines come to drain you like a Duracell battery?
TTYL… Bryan