The Forgotten Tech Trends of the 90s

Remember all those strange tech fads that were all the rage in the 90s that seemingly just...disappeared? What was their deal, and whatever happened to them?

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Co-Edited by: @NickNoir

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[nationsquid]

and use my code NATIONSQUID to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev.

[sydneysabre]

We need to bring back see-through colorful tech. I sell high end sewing machines, and there's one from that era that they did a clear blue edition of. It's such outdated tech now, but I always drool when I see one.

[bluishgreenkinda]

You would find those AOL discs on the sidewalks, on a bench in the shopping mall (which were still a thing), inside newspapers, on every coffee table, in a library, in cereal boxes, in the mailbox, and shoved down your throat. There was no NOT finding an AOL discs at any given location. They were ubiquitous.

[theelitelance]

Let me tell you, watching your videos and the topic you make them on gives me those feelings of Christmas as a child. Please never change your genre

[LindseyLouWho]

I had a giant section of my childhood bedroom wall, filled with AOL discs. You weren't wrong, lol. That, and X-files posters. Peak 90s kid.

[panqueque]

Back in the day I went to cyber cafes almost every day. Now the thought of logging into ANYTHING on what's basically a public computer makes my skin crawl. Truly a different time.

[cianog]

The 90s was optimistic because the trend was one of improvement.

[LikaLaruku]

Google would deny it, but they used to have a tab dedicated to finding mp3s off the internet. I believe they ditched it around the time DMCAs started hitting Youtube.

[rogerklotzisme]

I've always loved your videos. I've always been rather obsessed with the 90s (as well as the 80s/2000s), and just... despite people being born in that decade, they seem to remember very little about it. Like I'm always going on about how things were edited and made more fun, even when it was just a commercial. Your sponsor segment really highlights what I mean. You get it! The weird, sporadic cameras jumping, the video playing on less frames, the transparent images that would display over people talking, the vignette. *chef's kiss* It's perfect! I wish I had the time to make my own little ads like this.

Your stuff is great and makes me feel less bonkers when it comes to my obsession with the 90s and everything surrounding the era and the internet.

[Bishounen]

Internet Cafes are still popular in Korea, a country with the fastest internet in the world. Though its mostly for gaming

[OmegaWolf]

I remember setting a Napster download, which I knew would take about 20 minutes over dialup, going out for a walk, then coming back to find my song done. Good times.

[ScreamingAllTheTime]

I remember as a small child, my mom’s sheer usage of AOL trial discs got her a cease and desist in the mail. I also have a second grade Christmas ornament craft that is glitter designs on the shiny side a cd, with wrapping paper on the print side. The wrapping paper peeled on mine and I discovered it was an AOL disc. I got ahold of an old classmate and had them check theirs. It was also an AOL disc. I suspect they are all AOL discs my teacher was desperate to get rid of.

[Podsedneck]

The way you said synonymous at 3:00 is insane. Like cinnamon. Anyways love the channel!

[Konic_and_Snuckles]

*You should do an episode on the weirdness and growing pains of television tech in North America in the 2000s*

We saw many rapid, messy, and disruptive transitions:
- DVDs replacing VHS tapes for home media purchases
- The tumultuous progression of CRT SDTVs --> CRT EDTVs, HDTVs, and rear projecting DLP TVs --> Plasma and LCD
- The resulting co-mingling of 4:3/16:9/SD/HD cable/OTA programming
- Rise and fall of DVRs (like TiVo), media center PC, and the like
- That painful analog to digital switchover beginning 2005 and going into effect in 2009

Would be fantastic.

[JustAnotherBuckyLover]

I can't even TELL you how badly I wanted a see-through phone in the late 80s and I swore I would have one when I finally had a job... I never did get one. 😭

[pjw]

That ad read was so note-perfect for that era of video that it took me about 30 seconds to realise it was an ad.

Also this makes so much sense about the iMac G3. When it was released I thought it was a computer designed for kids, as it was so much more 'fun coded' than anything else that could be considered 'a computer'. To me it looked more like the sort of item you'd find in IKEA than an oppressive cubicle farm.

[davinp]

By 2000, Microsoft was getting ready to retire DOS as we now had an operating system with a graphical user interface. The internet was new when Windows 95 came out

[madbradfreeman]

I was one of the people who helped make sure Y2K was a non-event. At the time, I was rocking a G3 "Batmobile" Powerbook running the MacOS 10 public beta. Fun times.
And, yeah, never had to buy a floppy after AOL started delivering them. Too bad the CDs weren't repurposeable.

[kyanoAngel_old]

Here in the Philippines, computer cafes are still profitable and popular businesses today albeit not as much as they used to be. While computers have gotten cheaper over the years, not all Filipinos could afford them, which's one major factor.

I-Cafes were extremely popular back in the '90s and 2000s. They were almost everywhere. But since around the mid-2010s, thanks mainly to smartphones and availability of Wi-Fi, they're in the decline (tho not dead yet). The pandemic only made things even worse. Netopia used to be a very popular and widespread chain of I-Cafes but didn't even make it to 2020.

As a Millennial, I grew up going to I-Cafes from grade school up to college. I'd save lunch money for an I-Cafe on Friday or at the weekends to enjoy the best or most popular games with friends. I did have my own PC, but it was usually low- or mid-end.

[christopher]

Those mislabeled songs are interesting. Reminds me of how I once used Napster to download "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News, but the song I got was "The Power of Love" by Celine Dion.