Was the late 1990s the sweet spot for technology?

[Philip]

At the time of the late 90s, Windows had become established; Internet Explorer was around in dial-up format; cars were generally of good quality without all the complicated mod-coms of today; (large) mobile phones were becoming quite common. However, social media hadn't become a thing at that point, thus neither had the problems associated with it; phones were basic and thus not much of a distraction with people constantly being on them; things like email and e-tickets had either not taken off or weren't used much, so post offices and booking offices had more of a purpose.

Obviously since the 90s, British technology has continued to expand, so do you think the mid-late 90s were the 'sweet spot' for technology, for the reasons outlined above?

 

[dosxuk]

Not at all. Just sounds like harking back to the past when shopkeepers were friendly and the trains ran on time, rather than any of those things being objectively better than what we have now.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

My memories of late 90s technology include: Windows 98 routinely crashing; spending half an hour or installing Word from multiple floppy discs (and you couldn't just walk away and leave it because every few minutes the install would stop and demand that you put the next disc in the drive); having to pause looking up something you needed online because your flatmate wanted to make a phone call and you couldn't do both things at the same time on the phone line; programming on Windows was an utter pain, needing to deal with C APIs and fixing memory leaks; half the population thought the Internet was only for weird nerds looking at porn and that if you used it you were therefore weird; and if you wanted to catch a train anywhere, you had to show up at the station and hope it was running on time (and the Lancaster to London trains only ran every 2 hours and took way longer than today), pollution in cities was generally much bigger problem than today - and it seemed hardly anyone except me even cared (and there was cigarette smoke everywhere); monitors were those old CRT ones and you were never quite sure if they were safe or whether they were spewing out UV as well at you.

Nah, for all the problems we have with social media (and they certainly need sorting), I'll take today's level of technology any day.

 

[birchesgreen]

Late 90s? LOL no.

The only thing better then was that the web wasn't as ruthlessly commercially exploited as it is now. Good time to start a career in web development as it was a lot simplier and you were left to your own initiative a lot more than using whatever frameworks are cool this week.

 

[yorksrob]

I'm glad they invented the mp3 player, but am not too fussed about anything afterwards.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

I think 2010 was. Social media existed but you still had to "log on" at the end of the day onto your computer. Music was a bit of a pain before streaming but not impossible. It was the perfect balance between having mobile devices and stationary PCs that you could escape from. I think we should try and slowly decouple ourselves from the internet. Delete all your social media apps etc, get rid of tablets, go back to PCs so youre not always tempted to flick open a laptop etc.

 

[yorkie]

@Philip I don't understand your apparent objection to modern technology? Can you be more specific regarding what it is you are objecting to?

.... Internet Explorer was around in dial-up format...

This doesn't make sense and suggests a fundamental misunderstanding on your part.

I think what you meant to say was that the World Wide Web had become well established at that point (Netscape was in the process of being ousted by IE as the dominant browser of the time), however the bandwith was limited due to many users having to use dial-up connections.

....things like email and e-tickets had either not taken off or weren't used much...

Email was established before the WWW was, so again I think you're a bit muddled there.

As for your reference to e-tickets, and preference for a time before these were in widespread use, is it the case that you would rather people went out of their way to make a special visit to a traditional ticket office (which is bound by impartiality rules, meaning splits should not be proactively offered), rather than have the convenience of a website, such as the forum's booking engine, which provides a wide range of options (more than any ticket office would have had access to at the time, I suspect) to generate the desired itinerary, and issues all the tickets in one handy PDF?

I'm glad they invented the mp3 player, but am not too fussed about anything afterwards.

I could have predicted this response

 

[Philip]

@Philip I don't understand your apparent objection to modern technology? Can you be more specific regarding what it is you are objecting to?

This doesn't make sense and suggests a fundamental misunderstanding on your part.

I think what you meant to say was that the World Wide Web had become well established at that point (Netscape was in the process of being ousted by IE as the dominant browser of the time), however the bandwith was limited due to many users having to use dial-up connections.

The WWW was at a level where it was useful for quick research but wasn't taking over people's lives because social media hadn't taken off at that point and the dial up connection was slow. People were more likely to go to the library to read a book or look up information back then, and would socialise in person rather than online - arguably this was healthier than being consumed in a computer or device.

As for your reference to e-tickets, and preference for a time before these were in widespread use, is it the case that you would rather people went out of their way to make a special visit to a traditional ticket office (which is bound by impartiality rules, meaning splits should not be proactively offered), rather than have the convenience of a website, such as the forum's booking engine, which provides a wide range of options (more than any ticket office would have had access to at the time, I suspect) to generate the desired itinerary, and issues all the tickets in one handy PDF?

E-tickets, online banking, email...all perhaps more convenient, sometimes easier to use and more cost-effective. On the other hand, before these became widespread, there were more employment opportunities within the postal service, bank branches, supermarkets, booking offices etc. These may also present with a friendly face and someone to speak to, which has its advantages.

 

[yorksrob]

I could have predicted this response

You know me so well

 

[yorkie]

The WWW was at a level where it was useful for quick research but wasn't taking over people's lives because social media hadn't taken off at that point and the dial up connection was slow. People were more likely to go to the library to read a book or look up information back then, and would socialise in person rather than online - arguably this was healthier than being consumed in a computer or device.

Do you think it was the case that no-one was consumed in a computer (whatever that means) in the 1990s?

I use devices to do more things rather than consume myself; do you think that is the exception rather than the norm, and most people consume themselves in devices?

E-tickets, online banking, email...all perhaps more convenient, sometimes easier to use and more cost-effective. On the other hand, before these became widespread, there were more employment opportunities within the postal service, bank branches, supermarkets, booking offices etc. These may also present with a friendly face and someone to speak to, which has its advantages.

Are you saying the employment rate was higher in the late 90s compared to more recent years?

Long-term trends in UK employment: 1861 to 2018 - Office for National Statistics

Examines the long-term trends in UK employment by various components and provides the historical and legislative context behind some of the trends.

www.ons.gov.uk

Over the period 1946 to 1980, the number of employees increased at a moderate rate. Between 1980 and 1984, there was a sharp decline in the number of employees, and this coincided with the economic downturn experienced in the early 1980s. Since then, the number of employees has shown an upward trend, reaching a peak of 27.49 million in 2018.

 

[The Planner]

If anything the speed of internet connectivity in the 90s was the hinderence. If it was faster back then than 28.8, 33.6 and if you were loaded ISDN. If it was quicker then all the things you are bemoaning would have happened a lot earlier.

 

[nlogax]

Are you saying the employment rate was higher in the late 90s compared to more recent years?

I'm assuming @Philip is referring to the different nature of jobs between then and now. It's a shame we don't have a 2016 to present component in that BoE macroeconomic data but the trends are there for all to see. Banking, postal counters, supermarkets, ticket offices.. customer or front-facing roles continue to diminish as technology fills the gap.

Personally I'm unsure that the late 90s was a sweet spot for technology. Certainly not if my experience of using dial-up while living in a houseshare with four other people was anything to go by. My internet experiences started at university where bandwidth was never seemingly an issue, so after I graduated the late 90s was a backward step!

 

[Philip]

In the late 90s people were not used to the quick broadband connection, so even though dial-up seems slow now, back then it may not have done as we didn't have broadband to compare it to.

 

[lyndhurst25]

The internet may have been slower, but you weren’t constantly harassed by endless advertising cookie opt-out pop-ups.

 

[Crossover]

From someone who works in IT, some aspects of tech now are much better, even from 10 years ago - for its faults, Windows 10 (not had much experience of 11 yet, but from this aspect I believe it similar) is a lot easier for setting up (lots of drivers install automatically, you don't have piles of disks, and by extension, with the right hardware, it can be fairly speedy) and update (I remember the days of installing Windows 7 from "day zero" and then having hundreds of updates to install - with Windows 10 they're cumulative so far less "catch up" needed)

It has brought its own challenges though (and arguably some useless tech which could prove to be a security hole)

 

[nlogax]

The internet may have been slower, but you weren’t constantly harassed by endless advertising cookie opt-out pop-ups.

No, we were just harassed by endless advertising pop-ups.

 

[GusB]

In the late 90s people were not used to the quick broadband connection, so even though dial-up seems slow now, back then it may not have done as we didn't have broadband to compare it to.

The web was still very much in its infancy when I was at university in the early 90s and wasn't really used for commercial purposes at that point, but I was still used to having a faster connection there than I had with dial-up at home. Trying to download something took an absolute age and you had to pray that your connection wouldn't drop half way through.

If you want to go back to that "golden age", don't let anyone stop you, but I'll be keeping my fibre connection, thank you!

 

[JohnMcL7]

From someone who works in IT, some aspects of tech now are much better, even from 10 years ago - for its faults, Windows 10 (not had much experience of 11 yet, but from this aspect I believe it similar) is a lot easier for setting up (lots of drivers install automatically, you don't have piles of disks, and by extension, with the right hardware, it can be fairly speedy) and update (I remember the days of installing Windows 7 from "day zero" and then having hundreds of updates to install - with Windows 10 they're cumulative so far less "catch up" needed)

It has brought its own challenges though (and arguably some useless tech which could prove to be a security hole)

I remember when people were complaining about the end of XP and there was nothing wrong with it etc. and even aside from the many fundamental security issues it had, it was such a pain to install since it didn't even have native SATA support then of course you needed the driver CD or get all the drivers downloaded and slowly work through everything in device manager to get rid of the little exclamation marks. Win98 was even worse without even a partition manager whereas now I've been able to talk a non-tech person over the phone to install Windows and get it working.

Going up the other end there's some fantastic modern technology which I still marvel at, I have a little mini PC about the size of a couple of DVD cases which has ten cores (and another 10 from hypethreading), 64GB ram and 5TB SSD storage running ESXi so it can run complex PC, server and networking setups all on its own. I was wanting to work on testing some firewall configurations recently and could easily spin up a new firewall management center, add a couple of firewalls, cluster them then stick in a test Win11 PC then test taking one offline, building a new one etc. At work we can support far more servers than we've ever had before but with far fewer physical servers all with failover and independences from the hardware compared to in the 2000s even just to get a four core system it needed pretty hefty servers.

I don't miss dialup at all either which felt super slow at the time even without broadband as well as the hassle of tying up the phone and the long connection sequence to get connected and how easily connections could be dropped.

The only newer technology I'm less keen on is cars and currently have a 2011 Mazda which is a nice balance between decent features but still straightforward so no e-brake, lane departure warning or auto stop/start systems and it still has physical controls for everything with no touchscreens.

 

[The Planner]

In the late 90s people were not used to the quick broadband connection, so even though dial-up seems slow now, back then it may not have done as we didn't have broadband to compare it to.

Oh it was, I remember waiting over an hour for a 16Mb download for a game demo which is a fraction of a second on a 5G mobile.

 

[GS250]

The only newer technology I'm less keen on is cars and currently have a 2011 Mazda which is a nice balance between decent features but still straightforward so no e-brake, lane departure warning or auto stop/start systems and it still has physical controls for everything with no touchscreens.

Agreed. I think cars were at their best between about 2005-2015. Most came well specified but without the overkill that you have to put up with today. I'm at a total loss with what to replace my 2012 Lexus with. A traditional luxury car that doesn't try to do your job for you.

As for tech, yes it was great fun in the late 90s if you were 'in' to IT. Every year there was a big leap forward in cpu, gfx technology. Hands up who had an ISDN line for a superb online gaming experience? However for casual users it wasn't as much fun as kit required a fair amount of jiggery pokery to get it working.

I think 2012 and the advent of the Tinder app was a massive game changer for society though. Ditto twitter and Instagram etc.

 

[rg177]

My childhood online was in the 2008-2013 or so era, and for some reason I recall that I'd end up with a virus multiple times a year. I didn't download anything suspect, but one wrong turn and you seemed to brick your entire install.

Traditional "viruses" don't seem to be as popular as they once were - probably as things have got more sophisticated and anti-virus software is cheaper/free/more widely available.

 

[Thirteen]

I don't think there really is a sweet spot, every decade has had something new that changes everything tech wise.

 

[etr221]

"Technology always almost-works. If it always works, it's not technology"

I can understand the argument for the late 1990s being one of the sweeter spots - when much computer tech had come in, but before it became overwhelming - but wonder whether, with a greater perspective, both over what 'technology' is, and from a time perspective, there would be other sweet - even sweeter - spots to consider. And whether it depends on where one is in society.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Those who prefer 1990s technology... I take it you'd be happy with a world without (a) railforums, and (b) Pendolinos, but with pacers?

(On the other hand there were no Voyagers in the 1990s, so I guess that's a big plus for that era).

 

[PsychoMouse]

the mid-late 90s were the 'sweet spot' for technology

This is how the Aamish came about 300 years ago

 

[nlogax]

Those who prefer 1990s technology... I take it you'd be happy with a world without (a) railforums, and (b) Pendolinos, but with pacers?

Hey now.. uk.railway was thing back then

 

[david1212]

Overall no.

As several posts above state cars designed late 1990s have much less technology - a mechanical key & lock not a card and some communication protocol, far fewer sensors or ECU to say no, direct electric connections not Canbus control, no computer needed to retract brake cylinders / solenoids so pads and discs can be replaced etc so yes a sweet spot.

Again as already stated Windows 98 was fragile and the hardware still slow. XP was much more robust. 32-bit was a limitation but although I never used it to compare XP64 did exist. I still do not know why it was abandoned for the platform which started as Vista that was at least 10x bigger and has evolved in to Windows 11.

Digital cameras just existed but were very low resolution. As I recall it was around 2010 when 10MP cameras plus decent size memory cards were reasonably priced.

Putting aside the line sharing dial up internet was so slow. Even early broadband at 1Mbps was restrictive. Even if websites were far less graphic and video heavy I would not want to go back to less than 8Mbps.

I'm much less bothered than most by the leap in mobile phones. A basic phone can receive texts and calls for bank etc log in security. I prefer to wait 5 minutes in a queue then spend a minute at the window face-to-face buying rail tickets than deal with a TVM or a website on a computer never mind an app on a phone. What was a basic phone 10 years ago was enough to run Realtime trains, look at National Rail to find alternatives if disruption, receive and send short emails but 15 years on from the tread topic of late 1990's.

 

[Crossover]

I remember when people were complaining about the end of XP and there was nothing wrong with it etc. and even aside from the many fundamental security issues it had, it was such a pain to install since it didn't even have native SATA support then of course you needed the driver CD or get all the drivers downloaded and slowly work through everything in device manager to get rid of the little exclamation marks. Win98 was even worse without even a partition manager whereas now I've been able to talk a non-tech person over the phone to install Windows and get it working.

I think it was Windows 98 that was known to many as ‘Plug and Pray’!

Going up the other end there's some fantastic modern technology which I still marvel at, I have a little mini PC about the size of a couple of DVD cases which has ten cores (and another 10 from hypethreading), 64GB ram and 5TB SSD storage running ESXi so it can run complex PC, server and networking setups all on its own. I was wanting to work on testing some firewall configurations recently and could easily spin up a new firewall management center, add a couple of firewalls, cluster them then stick in a test Win11 PC then test taking one offline, building a new one etc. At work we can support far more servers than we've ever had before but with far fewer physical servers all with failover and independences from the hardware compared to in the 2000s even just to get a four core system it needed pretty hefty servers.

I’ve worked professionally with VM’s for over a decade now. Like you, I’ve spun up the odd firewall, copies of machines from backup to test on and the generally hardware abstraction helps greatly with disaster recovery

 

[Philip]

Windows 98 was a small upgrade on 95 it should be said. Windows 2000 was very good and this came before XP.

 

[JohnMcL7]

I think it was Windows 98 that was known to many as ‘Plug and Pray’!

I’ve worked professionally with VM’s for over a decade now. Like you, I’ve spun up the odd firewall, copies of machines from backup to test on and the generally hardware abstraction helps greatly with disaster recovery

Yeah I look back to these days and glad we're long past them, Win98 was the first Windows OS to offer USB support but so flakey you could plug in a device and the entire system would blue screen. No proper task manager either and 'not responding' on a program was just a normal occurrence. I don't miss any of that at all.

Also I didn't really appreciate how reliable modern computers are now compared to older models either, I was recently working on a 2004-era Dell Optiplex which ridiculously is still in production use at work (don't ask!) that was misbehaving and I remember back when those machines were current I was Dell certified to save time organising repairs which were frequent, I knew the hardware extremely well. We recently retired a standard set of similar PCs which were newer and I just don't know them at all because hardly any of them had gone wrong through their 24/7 life.