The internet in it's heyday, when it was a genuinely thrilling place to find information, and quite a lot of weirdness, and before it was swamped by corporate interests.
I remember starting out with gopher and a paper print out of 'The big dummies guide to the internet' which was a directory of almost every gopher and ftp site (pre web) along with a description of what you'd find there. Then the web came along and things got really good for a while. Once big corporations got involved it all went down hill.
Do you use this? I’ve been thinking that there has to an underground “internet” that mimics the old web. I was thinking that it would be BBS or something. I haven’t gone down any rabbit hole yet because lemmy has been scratching the itch alright.
I would limit it to the "web" in it's heyday. The internet as a whole is more wild than ever. And there's a chance that the fediverse could be just as thrilling in 10 years as the web was 20 years ago (and could be swamped by corporate interests).
I don't think the internet is getting less thrilling and weird, if anything it's downright scary at this point, it's just really easy to enter a walled garden, never leave, and never find the interesting stuff.
Setting up your computer before you go to bed to download a demo for a game that's... 20 MB large! Waking up in the morning to inevitably discover the download failed part way through.
Getright was my choice for years, until it decided to scrap an entire 600MB iso I had downloaded over 56k, and start over. Getright pissing me off was thebmain reason why I got pretty good at perl 25 years ago - I decided to write my own download manager.
sometimes I still have to do this, sure not for something that's only 20mb but a 1gb file can take a whole night to download in my uni accommodation. The landlord doesn't seem to give a shit though because they're still advertising that the building has "up to 100mb/s" wifi speeds.
I said/did/wrote (in my personal journal) so much cringe shit as a teen. I am GLAD it's not out there on permanent record. I got my Facebook account when I was like 17. Well after all the other kids my age did (I'm 31 now). I stopped using it by 23. I usually just made witty quips about life in general on Facebook, never aired my dirty laundry or spilled my guts or called a girl a bitch for not wanting to go out with me. I did go through a tough breakup during this time in my life, but the most I ever did was quote Cee-Lo's "Fuck You."
Facebook being problematic for kids is nothing new, but now many adults are intimately aware of how bad it is because we were those kids.
Back in the day personal blogs were pretty popular. Most of my friends had one, and we pretty much all treated it like a personal journal. So we aired our dirty laundry, for all to see, and it’s still in the internet archive to cringe at there too. We were blogger people, but LiveJournal was hugely popular for the same purpose.
It's two things, one personal vehicles are designed to bend air around them rather than slice through or just brute force through air resistance. This means that more bugs are pushed out of the way with newer vehicles now, compared to older vehicles which just had the bug hit the windshield. The second and much more impactful reason is because the insect population has dropped significantly in the last 25 years.
I just drove through Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas and confirmed there are still enough bugs out there to make you use a squeegee when you fill up for gas. But I remember when I was younger having to stop just to clean the windshield or else you wouldn't be able to see.
Not all, but most don't seem to have adventures. When I was a kid I'd go off into the woods and build a den or climb a tree, we once spent a whole week trying to dam a stream, god knows why. None of my friends kids go anywhere by themselves, a lot of them do 'forest school' where they'll be taken by adults to a sanitised woodland and taught how to build a teepee with pre cut wood, and it's just not the same thing.
A lot of folks blame this on kids simply not wanting to go outside anymore. But I believe a significant dimension to it also lies in the fact that the world is a lot more hyper vigilant about punishing things like trespassing, loitering, hooliganism, and the like.
The woods? Whose woods? Someone owns that land. Are they gonna call the cops on you if they notice you're in there? Do they not want you damming up their creek? Is that going to be considered vandalism? Do they not want to be liable if you injure yourself on their property? All questions that probably aren't in a kid's head, but I imagine would be on a modern parent's. The safety risks are high. Always were, that's not new. But the legal risks are new.
And yeah, it's not like getting in trouble for these sorts of things didn't happen back in, say, my dad's childhood. But I'd wager my dad would have gotten picked up by cops in his youth and sent off with stern tut-tut by the local sheriff for being just another incident of rowdy boys being boys, while my kid (if I had one) would be far more likely to make it out with a criminal record if they're old enough, or trigger a lawsuit against me for my negligence if they aren't.
The town I live in renovated a park to have a gigantic playground, and every nice weekend day I've been there there's tons of kids and parents there. On Halloween there were tons of kids out despite it being around 0F out that night. But random weeknights? I don't see kids playing in yards much. I don't see kids riding their bikes to convenience stores to get snacks. I think the risk acceptance of parents has shifted a lot plus kids are more able to occupy themselves with fondleslabs so they have multiple reasons to not go outside
A building down the street from where I live has like 3 families with kids renting and they are always outside in a big gaggle. Like is the weather close to halfway decent? They are out.
I think because their parents are never around supervising them. But that’s about the only place with obvious kids. There must be more, but I have no idea where.
I read an article recently about kids not spending much time outdoors anymore. One of the main reasons not mentioned here seems to be that the majority has nice rooms for themselves at home, and they enjoy the time they spend there.
Kids rooms are a lot nicer nowadays, and often they don't need to share it with a sibling as they might have 30 years ago. Also the amount of toys has risen, I suppose.
Not that this is entirely a good thing. Children need to spend more time outdoors. But let them enjoy their indoor time if they want to.
Same. There are a few kids in my road that will play directly outside their houses, but when I say 'kids', definitely 12+. One kid about 15 sets up skateboard ramps and does jumps which I love to see, but actual kids? Never see them without their parents. Kids are taken to school into their teens, I'd have been mortified if my parents came to school past like 9 or 10.
Getting your finger stuck in the VCR because the videotape would not eject. You had to stick your finger in and poke the tape while mashing the eject button. Worked everytime. Also pushing rewind on a tape and walking away because someone forgot to rewind and you don't want to watch the video in reverse.
As an old school retro enthusiast I can assure you a good laser mouse is leaps and bounds better than a trackball any day easily. I still love the track ball though because I was there gandalf. I was there 3000 years ago.
It's so hard to find remotely good games now... I have hit the point that I don't even bother looking at anything but paid offline games but even those often have microtransctions. I am glad that you can get a refund most of the time as long as you only used it less than an hour.
Tbf, as a parent now, I wouldn't let my kids go unsupervised that long without some periodic check-ins throughout the day. I mean, I definitely remember much of my childhood being like this, but in retrospect it also led to us doing lots of stupid/dangerous shit that did result in a few ER visits over the years (e.g. broken arms, legs, concussions, stitches, etc).
It was definitely the time to do stupid shit, but it was also great freedom. I remember constructing skate parks in abandoned factories that would rival some of the best pre fabs today. We made a 2 story indoor go-ped track. Obviously very dangerous stuff, but i wouldn't trade those memories for anything.
Waking up early to catch your cartoons. Or as an adult, having to be at the tv at 7 to watch the new episode. Everything will be streamed, thats fine i guess you wont have to worry about missing it. But it takes away the urgency to keep up.
There's a whole bucketload of TV series/anime I've not kept up with because "I'll just catch up later", and I still have yet to watch the latest "final season" part of AoT lmaooo
Or too cold. Seems like some parts of the world at least are getting more of those polar vortex, ultra cold days. And if climate change shuts down the gulf stream, maybe Europe gets a lot for cold days, too
That feeling of hope as you listen to the radio during breakfast as they read out the names of which local schools are delayed and closed. Even more the excitement when your school changes from delayed to closed.
This reminded me of visiting London nearly two decades ago. People went "It's so safe, the police officers don't even have guns!"
I get there and maybe saw two cops that weren't armed, most of the rest were suited for urban combat down to the MP5 and half dozen mags slung around them.
I overheard on the train home two middle aged ladies talking about their kids mobilephones.
One was saying how they dragged their teen and their mobile phone to the iphone store so they could setup the location tracker and "quiet mode" (parent phone can completly disable the teens phone), and how their child was upset but they are glad it was done.
The other lady was asking how she to can do the same.
Carrying over heaps of computer equipment (including the mega CRTs before their demise) to your friends house for an all night LAN party that you guys had been prepping for. Then having a blast while parents look at you funny for being into computers.
Oh, and seeing a new BBS at a bus stop that you'd need to go dial into and check out.
I'm commenting too much in these replies because I remember too much, but I'm going to share one last anecdote. For a while I had a case with a bolted on handle to bring to LAN parties. Then I read in a magazine where people were building computers into hard shell backpacks to take back and forth and that changed the game. If I had to guess that was 98 or 99.
Those things were super expensive at the time. I took a seasonal second job to buy one and mount my system in it. The cooling was garbage but I sure thought I looked cool dragging it to LAN parties.
In 2004ish I set up a dial up server so my dad and I could play Battle for Wesnoth. We lived across the country from each other and neither of us had reliable broadband available. However, he had free long distance calling so it was (and remains) a way to keep in touch and hang out without actually having to talk to each other because we're both terrible at that.
I cannot reply to a previous comment, due to it not federating here, but the children of 2020s will literally be online from day one!
There are countless parents that are posting pictures of their newborns on social media, on Instagram or Facebook, straight to a server in California, so imagine that every single person whose parents are like oh, I don't care about privacy, I got nothing to hide bro will have at least one photo there.
And it's not only that. They'll just never get to experience how life goes with no computer in sight, with no smartphones, not even cellphones at all. No computer, and more importantly, no internet, just cartoons on TV such as Life with Louie or Courage the Cowardly Dog or the Looney Tunes series. And even more importantly, no social media. None at all. Nothing to distract you from actually living.
I worked at a young familie's home. By yound i mean she had her first kids pretty young i assume, she was around 40, and he oldest maybe 18. She probably had in total 6 kids in their houshold. There were a lot of pictures of her, her boyfriend and children in the house. It super reminded me of my best friends house when i grew up. They had a lot of children and a lot of fotos, most of them very formal and some hand painted, because that was a thing back then, most of them very nice and framed.
The weird thing i found about her houshold was, all oft the pictures there where heavy filtered. Not just beauty filters, also the dog filters and all that instagram stuff. Something about it was so odd. Some pictures even had instagram handles on it, even the youngest had her own Instagram and he couldn't even write yet. Apparently it was really important to her to get them "good" handles as soon as possible. I dunno, i'm glad i don't have social media and non of my family is into it as well.
One of my friend/couple sent me a friend request for their newborn... Like, dude, I was willing to get a TDAP/LDAP booster so I wouldn't kill your newborn, but I'm not going to friend them on Facebook/insta...
Not me. An Army brat told me that the kids would know when 'snap inspections' were coming up. They'd tell the GIs when it was time to clean out the contraband. Then the kids would hide and watch where the soldiers hide their beer and porn. You can do the math
I would say albums as an art form overall. Yes of course some bands and musicians will still write an album in this way, but music has been playlist-ified to the point where most people won't listen to it like that. You take a song or two from it and forget the rest exist. My perception is that it's been a dying thing for some time now.
I also pick off my favourite songs from most albums, to be fair. But there are some albums that are best viewed as a single piece of art and I feel like that understanding from both listeners and artists is dying. If you just listen to Money and Breathe (In the Air) when they show up in your shuffle, are you really listening to Dark Side of the Moon?
And discussing with your friends which side is better. I listened to dark side of the moon and Sgt pepper and aerosmith greatest hits and a dozen other cassettes so many times!! Then when you hear a song on the radio you expect to hear the next song follow it.
I've been listening to the 1001 albums you have to listen to before you die list. (There's a website that randomizes it and gives you an album a day).
I'm about 100 albums in. The grand majority are trash, that includes stuff by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or Janis Joplin, etc. Just absolute garbage. One of two songs worth listening to and the rest is straight trash.
Albums as an art form died because it was never really a good art form to begin with.
Being able to chalk off the often embarrassing or cruel lessons of childhood as something personal, rather than something someone saved in video, to hound you with for the rest of your life.
Not being in constant contact with everyone you know, and not having a neverending stream of notifications assaulting you via your phone.
When you got to see relatives who lived far away, you talked about what had been going on in their life because you probably had no idea.
You read, listened to, or watched the news when you wanted to, unless someone you know told you sooner.
If you had to wait somewhere without a book or magazine, you just sat there with your thoughts. During childhood, you learned how to be bored and practice imagining things.
I wouldn't use "never get to experience" but i would say it's much harder to have that real sense of community that we easily found in the 90s, early 2000s, etc.
People are more connected to others but still more isolated from others. We were less connected to other people back then so people made a real effort to come up with fun activities and bond together. For kids, it's the lack of just playing outside in the neighbourhood with friends. For adults, it's the lack of third places and community/religious events.
Though to an extent, the lack of community, especially amongst children is due to the complete lack of independence and they have to depend on their parents to drive them everywhere. Parents have been arrested for picking up their child from school on foot, as in walking to school.
Due to that, and the kidnapping/child predator scare, children depend solely on their busy parents to drive them everywhere for every social interaction.
Though to an extent, the lack of community, especially amongst children is due to the complete lack of independence and they have to depend on their parents to drive them everywhere.
where do you live that there's not even a playground or a residential street within walking distance of your home?
There are still libraries that haven't computerized their catalog yet? I'm not sure I believe that.
(To be clear, I'm saying kids won't get the experience of specifically flipping through paper cards to find books, not the experience of using the library in general.)
I remember my family having an outdated encyclopedia because my aunt, a librarian, would hand off the old copy the library was trying to get rid of. I don't think I looked at them more than a few times, and even then it was only vaguely useful. Good riddance, online reference material is so much better.
I literally like don't even know what you're like talking about. I literally can't even.
(I've just read further down the various responses to this question, and I'm now seeing "literally" overused in literally every other comment, my generation will literally never escape!)
Snow days. Instead it's now "pull out your laptops to get on zoom. I once was off an entire week or so bc of a massive snowstorm. Downside, the sewer line underneath our apartment burst and we couldn't stay home that entire week.
Living off the grid. A world where AI and data collection wasn't so massive that even not participating in anything they will have a full profile of you. Data will become compromised until everything leaks out everywhere. When abusive powers will mathematically make future decisions for you, e. g. a. negative personality-health profile which makes a college dropout almost certain and therefore deny you the choice. People think in absolutes and not even partial success is viable. Just like now big corporations have such narrow application profiles that every human not built in a genetic factory is not worth it. I think the world becomes rapidly more hostile to neurodivergence. And all will suffer from it, because thinking diversity is key.
Lead poisoning. I know, I know, there are a ton of other hazards we're exposing ourselves to. We will have our reckoning with things like plastic, but at least lead is something we're aware of and dealing with.
Along those same lines, ozone layer destroying products.
We might be dealing with lead in some places, but it's still an ongoing issue. This year alone, there have been issues with applesauce, cinnamon, and other food products being contaminated with lead. Towns in the US, like Flint Michigan, still have endless problems related to it.
It's a long road before it'll be dealt with, so 2020 kids are definitely going to experience lead poisoning.
Yeah, I should have emphasized that we're "dealing with" the problem. As late as 2005, Corelle was still putting lead in at least some of its dishware. But compare that to what was happening before, we're not doing nearly as much to add to the problem. Compare with years past, where we were sticking it in paint where kids would eat paint chips, in gasoline, and even as a sweetener.
I heard rumours that the new Stanley cup everyone was obsessed with for a week contained lead (not in contact with the inside of the cup, but still, why is lead there at all in 2024)
Tying up the landline phone with their dialup modem.
Polio... well they might actually, depending on how anti-science their parents are and if they live in one last two pockets of it, Pakistan and Afgjanistan.
My previous answer to this question was about buying a phone instead of renting from the phone company. I realized that something today's children may never experience is the government actually enforcing antitrust law, and in the bigger picture, the feeling of trust that the government is there to look out for us and will do the right thing.
(Yeah, that trust was sometimes misplaced, but it existed. We also used to believe that the violators of that trust would be held accountable.)
I don't think there's a human alive today that has. We've been dumping chemical waste in water supplies for centuries, but particularly nastier stuff (PFAS) over the last century.
I think games as a while have shifted focus from being fun to being addicting, with few exceptions. Little Big Planet and Twisted Metal were fun; Roblox wants your money. And then there's the micro transaction hell that plagues mobile games, which seem to be most of what children play or only have access to these days.
Recently I was practicing singing "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers for karaoke. I was looking back through its history. Originally it was poorly received, partially because the horrors of WW2 were pretty fresh. In terms of dates, it would be about like someone making a comedy about the 2001-9-11 terrorist attacks, but of course with a death toll that was five orders of magnitude greater. I can only hope that we continue our winning streak of not having superpowers duking it out.
No, those are more like kit kats. Pop rocks were little candy crystals that you would put on your tongue and they would jump off you tongue and make a pop or crack sound.