Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#71

Post by tx-0 » Sat, May 25, 2019, 10:56 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #46

smacktoward wrote: post #8

Let me answer your question with another question. How old are you? Because I'm in my 40s, which means I was in my 20s during the 1990s. And from my perspective, it was not a notably simpler time back then than it is today. It was not some pastoral idyll, it was just a time a lot like now, except it was a little harder to get a hold of people. But I do notice that when I talk to people in their 20s and 30s, they ofte…

> But I do notice that when I talk to people in their 20s and 30s, they often talk about the '90s as some kind of dramatically simpler time. But that's not because of anything about the '90s; it's because they were children during the '90s, and people of all ages look back on their childhood as a simpler time. That sounds like an easy copout. Some eras are simpler than others, others are safer than others, some are m…

the original question contained an unsupported assertion that the 90s were simpler: it's not a cop-out to challenge the assertion and to try to explain it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#72

Post by rootusrootus » Sat, May 25, 2019, 10:56 PM UTC

gvd wrote: post #64

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also in my 40s, and I strongly disagree. While I don't see the 90s as some sort of idyllic calm Zen, the nature of discourse and social connection (or lack thereof) I feel has been seriously harmed by technology. While I think it's a mistake to look at the past through rose-colored glasses, I also think it's a mistake to think "Oh, well things have always been that way."

The 90s simpler? You try learning a new technology on YouTube in the 90s or reading blogs etc. Students have it so easy these days

Ha, indeed. Books, lots and lots and lots of books. Fond memories of going to Powell's periodically to get more, but not as fond memories of having to learn everything about the computer using a book.

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#73

Post by gaze » Sat, May 25, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

It seems rare to me that software is carefully engineered and thought out in advance anymore. There's a "move fast and break things" and "worse is better" attitude where designing things carefully is largely seen as a waste of time. Why bother when there's a hundred "good enough" solutions that you can glue together and hardware is so powerful you figure that it won't matter.

What I'm saying is that there's an emergent complexity from bolting together a ton of things together in ways that work "well enough." Things that are working well out of the scope in which they were originally engineered... or things that just carry a ton of baggage with them. This creates complexity.

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#74

Post by njepa » Sat, May 25, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

zzzcpan wrote: post #58

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except it was a little harder to get a hold of people Hmm. Really? Few call centres or queuing systems around yet. My bank had a local number that was answered in 3 rings - often by the same person. So did the phone and electric companies, and the tax office. They might actually remember you. I probably couldn't ping a friend if they were out with the dog, or on holiday, and definitely not in the car - few had mobi…

You can probably store all the information computers stored at the beginning of 90s on a single server today. That's how simpler 90s were.

I definitely think computers have gotten better since the '90s. Mostly because of the very real scarcity at the time. Unfortunately the last 5 years have been mostly a wash with cpu, memory, storage and gpus not getting better as before. And that seems largely true of phones and software as well.

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#75

Post by rleigh » Sat, May 25, 2019, 11:03 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #26

You mean when computers ran at MHz speed as opposed to GHz? It took a lot more work to get a decent user experience.

I have to disagree. The current state of computing is a disgraceful state, squandering multiple GHz of compute power to give worse performance than much software from the 386 era. It might be marginally more featureful, but those gains don't account for the huge amount of bloat and waste. And in practice, much of the software I used in that era had was both more featureful and more powerful than the equivalents today, which have been progressively dumbed down pandering to mobile users.

Low tens of MHz and low memory required careful and thoughtful design to make optimal use of the available resources and provide an interface with minimal latency. Today, it's wasted with gleeful abandon.

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#76

Post by gshdg » Sat, May 25, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #28

EliRivers wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people not being able to contact me 24/7 You can still have that! I have it. Literally cannot remember the last time I answered the phone :)

Yeah, that's at least partially a social problem or how you relate to people and tech, not a tech problem per se. You have to manage your relationships to both people and tech.

Back then the expectations were different. So if you didn’t want to be reachable at all times, there was less relationship management involved.

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#77

Post by DoreenMichele » Sat, May 25, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63

DoreenMichele wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's at least partially a social problem or how you relate to people and tech, not a tech problem per se. You have to manage your relationships to both people and tech.

The aspect 'zulgan is probably missing is that back then, you didn't have to manage this at all, as it was not a possibility. A problem not existing in the first place beats being good at dealing with it.

That line of thinking implicitly assumes no upside to being capable of connecting at will, 24/7.

I live in a small town with a surprising amount of 24 hour service. I'm not obligated to run off to the store every night at 2am just because I can, but I sure as hell appreciate being able to do so when I need to or want to.

There are upsides to our current ability to connect. Acting like "simply not having that problem is better" amounts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#78

Post by NeedMoreTea » Sat, May 25, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #65

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except it was a little harder to get a hold of people Hmm. Really? Few call centres or queuing systems around yet. My bank had a local number that was answered in 3 rings - often by the same person. So did the phone and electric companies, and the tax office. They might actually remember you. I probably couldn't ping a friend if they were out with the dog, or on holiday, and definitely not in the car - few had mobi…

Cassettes? We had CDs before the 1990s, thankyouverymuch.

Course we did, but a CD in the car? I think that had to wait until about the millennium. Tapes were still hugely popular through the 90s, even pre-recorded. Never did understand that as pre-recorded tapes had abysmal quality compared to home taping. :)

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#79

Post by DoreenMichele » Sat, May 25, 2019, 11:14 PM UTC

gshdg wrote: post #76

DoreenMichele wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's at least partially a social problem or how you relate to people and tech, not a tech problem per se. You have to manage your relationships to both people and tech.

Back then the expectations were different. So if you didn’t want to be reachable at all times, there was less relationship management involved.

I was an adult in the nineties. I was subject to vastly more expectation to keep in touch and be available and call people than I am currently.

Re: Ask HN: Do you miss 90s simplicity?

#80

Post by GuB-42 » Sat, May 25, 2019, 11:14 PM UTC

No.

And I was a teenager in the 90s, peak nostalgia, but the answer is still no.

The 90s weren't that simpler, we just had different problems. In fact, I have a bit of trouble finding things that really were simpler from a personal perspective.

The one thing I can think of is security. We didn't have security checks everywhere, kids could do plenty of "dangerous" things, we didn't see pedophiles everywhere etc... And I kind of miss it. But it may just be the result of living in a safer society: human lives are becoming incredibly valuable, resulting in over-protection.

Other than that, think about how simpler internet made things. Want to buy something unusual: buy it online with a few clicks. Access to knowledge is almost limitless. I don't miss going to the bookstore at the other side of the town, noticing that the book I wanted isn't available, take an order, and come back 2 weeks later to pick it up. All these forgotten details were really annoying thinking back.

Another example: cars. Cars used to be mechanically simpler, which was great for the DIY types. But modern cars are so much more reliable. Smoking cars on the curb were a much more common sight back them. So maybe cars were simpler to repair, but not having to repair make life much simpler.

Now about computers. Sure computers were simpler under the hood. Understanding a CPU and assembly was comparatively easy back then. But nowadays, we have abstraction layers that make computers more accessible at every level. We just shifted a few layers up. Truth is, even oldschool computers hid a lot of complexity regarding the electronics inside it that we, as kids, didn't realize and older people did.