Reason 1 that life was better in the 90s: the Internet.
By Edward Willis (http://encw.xyz)
Published Nov/12/2022


The internet in the 90s was better than today's 2022 internet. In the 90s most
people who had the internet used 56k modems. 56k modems were slow by today's
standards; most of the time I got ~5KiB/s download. But you know what, people
could get their email, read the news, and access their online banking accounts.
Downloading large files (those over a MiB) took a lot longer, but it was doable.

Because the internet in people's homes was slower, the web was a hell of a lot
lighter. Web pages were smaller and simpler, and you weren't fighting a
bajillion Javascript scripts just to read the content. The web was a much more
enjoyable experience than it is today.

And it was also a much more decentralized. Today websites like Reddit have
eaten most of the old forums that used to be so common. Facebook and Twitter
have replaced most of the personal homepages people used to run. Instead of
there being only one point of view, enforced by censorship and the social media
hivemind, people freely expressed themselves. People didn't get cancelled, and
there were no on-line social justice mobs.

Because the internet was so slow that you couldn't use it for all the things it
is used for today, in the 90s the internet wasn't ever present, and life didn't
revolve around it.

When you bought a video game, whether for PC or console, the physical media you
received, and you would get physical media, contained the finished version, not
some buggy mess they released and planned to send out a day one patch for.
Today the games you buy are mostly broken on the disc, and are dependent on a
server being there on the internet, and sending out patches to be functional
and enjoyable.

Same went for any software you bought. You'd buy CorelDraw, or Lotus 123, or
whatever, bring it home, and install it, and it worked and was yours forever.

And everyone had album and movie collections. People truly OWNED the media they
loved, they didn't just rent it in perpetuity. And they'd really listen to
their music. Because you had to buy your music, you'd have to pick carefully in
the store, and you'd sit and listen to the whole album when you got home.

Our phones didn't have the internet. They were mounted on the wall, and
connected to each other by a series of wires that went all over the world. All
they did was make and receive phone calls. We did have cell phones, and if you
happened to have one, and not everyone did, they didn't have internet either,
though they did have text messaging. As a result of not having a multiple
megabit internet connection in their pockets, people didn't walk around staring
at their phones like zombies. Instead they were present and aware, wherever
they were, whatever they were doing. You also had to plan what you were going
to do before you did it. After all, you couldn't just get directions or more
information from the internet wherever you were, whatever you were doing.

Smartphone addiction is truly just internet addiction; because just about
everything people do on their phones requires internet access. It has changed
the way people behave. It has changed the way they think and process
information. People use the phrase "digital natives" for the Z generation, and
I think that is a terribly sad thing to be. I am grateful to have been alive to
remember the world before it was warped by the internet. This new world reminds
me of the quote "You'll own nothing and be happy".

Now internet entrepreneurs want us to replace our real things and lives with
augmented reality falsehoods, and fall deeper into the internet. Scam artists
peddle internet coins that aren't coins they generate with mining that isn't
mining. We didn't have any of this nonsense in the 90s.

All of this combined is why life, and the internet, was better in the 90s.