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.
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.
in its* heyday
If you like gopher, you’re gonna love Gemini: https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini
I’ve been keeping half an eye on it for a while, I should probably give it a go again.
in its* heyday
Home ownership
Oooof
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.
Remember download managers?
What a blast from the past! Totally forgot that these were a thing lol.
“apparently my sister picked up the phooone! Aarrg! $!#@t”
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.
Bugs hitting the front windshield in extraordinary numbers.
This is a sad one once you notice it. The outdoors feel emptier
what happened to the bugs?
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.
the insect population has dropped significantly in the last 25 years.
Why has that happened?
Pesticides
Climate change
Less flowers
Pesticides
Accelerating climate change and an increase in consumer car culture (more cars on road to kill bugs = less bugs)
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We managed to kill off a third of the entire bug population during the last 25 years or so.
Huh, I think they all flew to Mexico, I did a road trip from Mexico to Austin TX recently and I do recall having not many bugs in my windshield in the USA… But back home to Mexico they all started to appear LMAO.
More of a the natural habitat of insects are still thriving in Mexico and the habitat being wiped elsewhere.
Fireflies/Lightning bugs. I remember there were so many in backyards in the summer, even in the suburbs.
Then they just kinda went away. Feel like I’m lucky if I even see a few a year.
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.
Car design change? I’d assume that more aerodynamic cars airflow that sweeps more bugs away rather than smacking them into the glass. I can assure you that they still hit motorcycle visors.
I mean, I see way less bugs when outside even a decade ago.
The internet being a “place” you would go to and then leave.
That’s almost impossible to do now because everything is so linked to being online.
I don’t miss dial up speeds, but I do miss the expectation of not always being online.
Luckily my job no longer expects it of me because I just don’t answer after hours anymore.
And not being always reachable by phone. If you are out, there was simply no way to reach you. Good times.
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.
Woods aren’t often ‘owned’ here.
I’d be so scared to let a kid do that now. Barbed wire is everywhere, everyone wants to brandish a gun at strangers, and truck drivers can’t even see pedestrians anymore.
I don’t have kids though, because I couldn’t force a kid to hide indoors all day, either.
We used to scramble over barbed wire fences like it was nothing. My dad actually speared his leg on a fence spike as a kid, at least barbed wire just cuts you up a bit. None of our parents had any idea we were doing that though, we’d come home if we needed a plaster and say we fell off a bike or something.
Or more likely, they knew nut didn’t care, because they did all the same tbings.
Nah, we definitely got in trouble if they found out we were doing stupid shit.
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Wow, am I a geezer already?
Getting static shocked by the TV screen.
Reminds me of the time I had fun screwing up our CRT TV with magnets.
And degaussing monitors.
We used to leave on our bikes for the day (no phones, so basically unreachable). The only rule was you had be back by dinner.
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).
Children need dangerous play in order to develop into successful adults.
I don’t disagree. My comment was saying a healthier balance is what I would prefer when my kids are a bit older. That article fails to be well-rounded and only focuses on proving their hypothesis versus presenting data in an objective manner. For example:
The answer lies in expectations. Parents today receive constant messaging that in order to be “good parents”, they must always keep their children safe. And it is widely believed that the world is no longer a safe place for children to play in. Yet statistics show that it has never been a safer time to be a child. Injury-related deaths are at an all-time low in most Western nations. In the US, deaths from unintentional injuries fell by 73% for boys and 85% for girls between 1973 and 2010. This misperception of risk creates the parental paradox.
Yet just a bit earlier in the article, she mentions this:
Every successive generation of children since the 1970s has seen their outdoor play and freedom shrink. Time use data show that children’s leisure time has gone down, particularly time spent in unstructured outdoor play, while time spent in academic and screen-based activities has increased. Between 1975 and 2015, outdoor play among UK children decreased by 29.4%, while screen-based activities increased by 22.4%. In the U.S., only 16% of children in 1997 played outdoors every day. By 2003—just six years later—that dropped even further to 10%.
So how can they rule out that it’s safer now because the amount of kids engaging in unsupervised, dangerous/risky activities is the lowest it’s ever been? (As a side note: In the US, I think she also ignores the very real financial problems with serious injuries. A medical bill for a broken bone or other serious injury can cost some families tens of thousands of dollars without insurance. Back in the 60s/70s and earlier, medical bills were way, way more affordable than now.)
There are other problems, as well. She seems to only focus on “intensive parenting” and showing that structured activities are a negative thing. Whereas articles like this, https://parenthetical.wisc.edu/2017/01/23/acing-afterschool-making-extracurricular-activities-work-for-your-teen/ , argue that structured activities can be beneficial, too. Later near the end she does discuss simply prioritizing it versus going all in, but the way it’s presented throughout the rest of the article makes it seem like structured activities are entirely a negative thing and unsupervised, unstructured activities is the best way for kids to thrive.
Anyway, I’m an advocate for simply striking a healthy balance between the two: Don’t overburden your kids with supervised, structured activities, and don’t let them become feral by completely going hands-off with their free time. In other words, gently guide, mentor, and support them. :)
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.
Haha, same here, but ours were packed dirt trails with dirt and wood ramps in the woods (our neighborhood had a large forested area nearby). Fun stuff, and definitely some very fond memories.
But, I was definitely one of the kids that broke their leg (my femur) and had to get 4 steel pins that stuck out of my skin to set the bone while it healed for about 3 months before getting a regular cast for the rest of the healing. It was pure agony, the entire healing and physical rehab recovery process took almost a year (my school even sent an in-home tutor to my house for a couple of hours a day since I had to stay at home for several months). I’d never want anyone to go through that, particularly my kids.
That being said, I do think it’s important for kids to have a degree of privacy and autonomy, I just don’t think I’d be kosher with the amount of unsupervised freedom that I had as a kid (my kids are still <5, so I have some time before they’re semi-free range animals).
Dirt tracks were amazing. We had a few, one of which was a huge bowl in the ground. The jumps were enormous and I always thought “whos hitting these?” Like pro level size and you would never see anyone on them. Then you’d hear “so and so” did a 3 on that one. It made for some good myths. Luckily there was so much empty space, we’d just make some jumps for our skill level.
So you are saying maybe two years?
The App Store not being filled with predatory trash
Accompanying their loved ones to the departure gate at the airport.
Or walk into the cockpit of a commercial flight while in flight to see how pilots worked
That was super cool for me as a flight sim enthoustic kid.
They will occasionally let a kid visit the cockpit while boarding if they show interest and the crew is extra nice
And you can ask for a trading card of the plane from the oilot as well
Cool, probably very dependent on the airline. I’ve never had one of those.
And it’s all fun and games until you bring out that 737 Max card …
Snow days
If not for climate then because of remote learning.
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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.
Social media not being the focus of every government, advertising agency and activist organization in existence.
Their 60’s.
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True.
Regular police officers not wearing full body armor and tactical gear.
I think that’s pretty dependent on the country
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 think London is its own special place. The Met police have a reputation in the UK for being rougher.
I agree with that, some countries don’t have the money to oppress all fancy like that.
