The Terminator
Cyburbian
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Almost 25 years into this century, its reductionist to say "well, its sure been a duzi!". But well, it ain't been an easy 23 years and its interesting (if not a bit scary) to see this Century's aesthetic and trajectory develop as the 20th's norms get increasingly irrelevant. Lets pick a point in the 90s, whenever you like in the decade, and muse for a second on what you would have thought "the future" i.e. the 2020s would look like from your 1990s eye? Ill start.....
In 1999, when I was eight years old, I imagined "the future" looking something like:
-Palm Pilot like stylus touchscreen supercomputers in our hands where I could play Midtown Madness with as good graphics as I could on the PC. I adored my Father's Palm Pilot and tripped when the company gave him a new one and he handed me down his old (1998) model circa 2001. I broke it not even a year later and its in my attic somewhere with a giant crack non functional. Interestingly, I didn't picture these "supercomputers" as having any kind of internal memory or data storage, and pictured swapping out cool little mini-disks to change games or music/movie/program etc.
-The Twin Towers existing and being an enduring part of the New York skyline with taller super towers rising around it. 1999 Me would have tripped bawls seeing what the skyline of just 57th Street alone looks like in 2023. The little boy wouldn't understand how those buildings are emblematic of much of what is wrong with present day New York, he would have just been like "TALL BUILDINGS, COOL!"
-Cars being autonomous, electric and flying around at low altitudes like in the jetsons, I got 2/3 right. I had seen the General Motors EV1 on display at Epcot and read about it in my Time for Kids reader, it was a big deal before big oil made GM scuttle the thing. I thought the EV1 was the wave of the future.
-CDr's being commonplace and everyone having the capacity to make their own high-storage CDs, my uncle Rob had a CDr Burner in '99 and we thought it was like space technology. Again, little me couldn't see MP3s taking off, although my Father did (he had Creative (the electronics company, remember them?) as one of his [advertising] clients in like 2001).
-Being able to buy anything you want on the internet, my mom was an early user of Amazon and bought CDs, Books and "gifty" like things off of it beginning whenever it expanded from JUST books. My dad used to also buy star-trek memorabilia on web 1.0, and being an Ad Man, he was always talking about eCommerce being the way of the future from like 1995-on.
-America still being #1 on the world stage, because I was a young kid inundated with Clintonite propaganda
In 1999, when I was eight years old, I imagined "the future" looking something like:
-Palm Pilot like stylus touchscreen supercomputers in our hands where I could play Midtown Madness with as good graphics as I could on the PC. I adored my Father's Palm Pilot and tripped when the company gave him a new one and he handed me down his old (1998) model circa 2001. I broke it not even a year later and its in my attic somewhere with a giant crack non functional. Interestingly, I didn't picture these "supercomputers" as having any kind of internal memory or data storage, and pictured swapping out cool little mini-disks to change games or music/movie/program etc.
-The Twin Towers existing and being an enduring part of the New York skyline with taller super towers rising around it. 1999 Me would have tripped bawls seeing what the skyline of just 57th Street alone looks like in 2023. The little boy wouldn't understand how those buildings are emblematic of much of what is wrong with present day New York, he would have just been like "TALL BUILDINGS, COOL!"
-Cars being autonomous, electric and flying around at low altitudes like in the jetsons, I got 2/3 right. I had seen the General Motors EV1 on display at Epcot and read about it in my Time for Kids reader, it was a big deal before big oil made GM scuttle the thing. I thought the EV1 was the wave of the future.
-CDr's being commonplace and everyone having the capacity to make their own high-storage CDs, my uncle Rob had a CDr Burner in '99 and we thought it was like space technology. Again, little me couldn't see MP3s taking off, although my Father did (he had Creative (the electronics company, remember them?) as one of his [advertising] clients in like 2001).
-Being able to buy anything you want on the internet, my mom was an early user of Amazon and bought CDs, Books and "gifty" like things off of it beginning whenever it expanded from JUST books. My dad used to also buy star-trek memorabilia on web 1.0, and being an Ad Man, he was always talking about eCommerce being the way of the future from like 1995-on.
-America still being #1 on the world stage, because I was a young kid inundated with Clintonite propaganda
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