I just watched the Y2K episode of Sports Night, in which Jeremy claims that the complete system failure during his Y2K test is "a metaphor for the new millenium
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...Yeah. I hesitate to comment because I don't want to color the discussion -- hell, I want people to convince me I'm wrong -- but I feel the same way.
I meant global, mostly, when I asked the question. I can almost say without exaggeration that every single good thing about my personal life now has happened in the last decade. But that's because ten years ago I hadn't even quite graduated from college yet. Of course all the good stuff was yet to come.
Globally, though, it's a bad scene. When I think about the things that were scary and bad in 1999 and compare them to now, it's like they aren't even on the same scale. Maybe that's a reasonably objective scale and maybe it isn't; maybe these things just seem worse because they're now. I want that to be true. I want this to be part of the normal up and down in the course of human events, and in 2019 we'll look back and say, "Wow, look at all the things we've fixed since then
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The LGBTQI movement has made major advances, for one.
That's the one I keep coming back to, myself. I ask myself, "When I tell my 6th graders what life was like when I was in 6th grade, when will it sound like I'm talking about history?" And the answer is, when I talk about personal computing/the internet, and when I talk about homosexuality.
(This is two decades, of course, but) when I was eleven, gay people were the folks who brought you AIDS. Now I live in a state where gay men and women can marry each other just like anyone else, and sexual orientation and gender identity are part of the anti-discrimination law. Yes, that's also the difference between living in SC and living in MA. We have a hell of a long way to go. But there has been a real shift for the good.
I just wish I could think of more things in this category.
when I was eleven, gay people were the folks who brought you AIDS
i agree that that was partly geography. it's also partly who the "you" is. there's been both progress and anti-progress. two steps forward, one step back.
I think that people as a whole are more environmentally conscious now. A lot more people recycle, there are many more public recycling receptacles on the street, in airports, etc, not just on college campuses, and I hear a lot more people talk about concerns over the environment. I don't know if you can claim this as an achievement for humanity, as such, but I do think it's a shift in paradigm.
Also people are more concerned with eating healthy foods, and getting unhealthy foods out of schools, and introducing healthy foods to city communities and so on. That may just be a fad, but I think it's also a step in the right direction.
PS -- Also you can get all kinds of those fluorescent replacements for incandescent bulbs, and they're much cheaper, and they come in all kinds of sizes, etc. There's a whole aisle in Wal-Mart dedicated to energy-saving bulbs! So I think that's also a positive sign that conserving energy and the environment are becoming more a part of everyday living.
No, I agree, but at least it's starting to cause people to make lifestyle changes, and it's easier and easier to incorporate them into their lives-- which really lowers the entry bar for other people doing so. Like you can get canvas shopping bags everywhere now. So as I said it's not necessarily a huge advancement but at least it's a shift from people doing nothing to people doing these things as an easy part of their everyday living.
I looked briefly for stats and couldn't find it, but I think that the global standard of living has risen pretty steadily this past decade, particularly with China and India's economic booms. Even more dramatic is the rise in global Internet access; many more people are connected to vast amounts of information than a decade ago. You could say that these trends were inevitable from where we were in 1999, but at least it shows that all the bad things that happened weren't bad enough to stop these trends.
many more people are connected to vast amounts of information than a decade ago
And yet you still couldn't find stats about global standard of living. :)
Just kidding. I do think the standard of living thing has merit; I just worry about the flip side. China pretty much just tanked Copenhagen precisely because they want to hang on to their unsustainable economic boom. A decade ago it looked like there might be a way to do this so that not every country had to go through the Industrial Revolution on the way, but that doesn't appear to be happening.
Same-sex marriage has already been mentioned, but it's worth saying again. And just generally--in 1999, it was still edgy to have lesbian subtext on TV; now it's pretty much de rigueur to have out gay characters, and nobody bats an eyelash at them.
LiveJournal was founded in 1999, sure, but realistically you can say that online social networking was a product of the aughts. At the end of 1999 you'd be having this discussion via email, or a mailing list, or some other much narrower distribution mechanism than LJ or Facebook or Twitter or what have you.
And then there's.... Erm, well, there's.... Ok, I'll get back to you if I think of anything else.
Oooh. Smoking bans is good. In 1999, reeking of cigarette smoke was an accepted side effect of going to a club or bar. You couldn't go dancing without breathing in secondhand smoke the whole time.
Another one I thought of: media on demand. Napster had just started in 1999. TiVo was introduced in 2000. Now, you can legally stream just about any music you would want for free to your computer, and watch a lot of TV online. And for anything that's not available legally, there's always bittorrent.
Fat acceptance is pretty much a 21st century development too, isn't it?
I'm not convinced that social networking is a force for the good. I think I got more done before all that shit, love it though I do.
Fat acceptance is pretty much a last-two-years development, as far as I can tell, and still isn't a thing most people have heard of. But we appear to be on a positive trajectory, so I'll give it to you.
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I meant global, mostly, when I asked the question. I can almost say without exaggeration that every single good thing about my personal life now has happened in the last decade. But that's because ten years ago I hadn't even quite graduated from college yet. Of course all the good stuff was yet to come.
Globally, though, it's a bad scene. When I think about the things that were scary and bad in 1999 and compare them to now, it's like they aren't even on the same scale. Maybe that's a reasonably objective scale and maybe it isn't; maybe these things just seem worse because they're now. I want that to be true. I want this to be part of the normal up and down in the course of human events, and in 2019 we'll look back and say, "Wow, look at all the things we've fixed since then ( ... )
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That's the one I keep coming back to, myself. I ask myself, "When I tell my 6th graders what life was like when I was in 6th grade, when will it sound like I'm talking about history?" And the answer is, when I talk about personal computing/the internet, and when I talk about homosexuality.
(This is two decades, of course, but) when I was eleven, gay people were the folks who brought you AIDS. Now I live in a state where gay men and women can marry each other just like anyone else, and sexual orientation and gender identity are part of the anti-discrimination law. Yes, that's also the difference between living in SC and living in MA. We have a hell of a long way to go. But there has been a real shift for the good.
I just wish I could think of more things in this category.
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i agree that that was partly geography. it's also partly who the "you" is. there's been both progress and anti-progress. two steps forward, one step back.
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Also people are more concerned with eating healthy foods, and getting unhealthy foods out of schools, and introducing healthy foods to city communities and so on. That may just be a fad, but I think it's also a step in the right direction.
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And yet you still couldn't find stats about global standard of living. :)
Just kidding. I do think the standard of living thing has merit; I just worry about the flip side. China pretty much just tanked Copenhagen precisely because they want to hang on to their unsustainable economic boom. A decade ago it looked like there might be a way to do this so that not every country had to go through the Industrial Revolution on the way, but that doesn't appear to be happening.
Reply
LiveJournal was founded in 1999, sure, but realistically you can say that online social networking was a product of the aughts. At the end of 1999 you'd be having this discussion via email, or a mailing list, or some other much narrower distribution mechanism than LJ or Facebook or Twitter or what have you.
And then there's.... Erm, well, there's.... Ok, I'll get back to you if I think of anything else.
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...I'm trying here.
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Another one I thought of: media on demand. Napster had just started in 1999. TiVo was introduced in 2000. Now, you can legally stream just about any music you would want for free to your computer, and watch a lot of TV online. And for anything that's not available legally, there's always bittorrent.
Fat acceptance is pretty much a 21st century development too, isn't it?
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I'm not convinced that social networking is a force for the good. I think I got more done before all that shit, love it though I do.
Fat acceptance is pretty much a last-two-years development, as far as I can tell, and still isn't a thing most people have heard of. But we appear to be on a positive trajectory, so I'll give it to you.
Reply
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