I asked some friends the other day what they miss most about the 90s. These were some of the gem responses I received: cassette tapes, CDs, renting DVDs, pay phones, smoking in public, safety, roller skating with friends, no mobile phones and no social media. No social media? Imagine that.
It seems crazy to think, but if it weren’t for the 90s, so many things wouldn’t be doable today. Like browsing Bored Panda. Or finding cool stuff on Facebook. Talking of which... There’s actually a Facebook page called 90s Flashback that’s dedicated solely to whipping up nostalgic memories from that era. We’ve compiled a list of our favorites.
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One of my favorite things about growing up in the 90s was that things seemed simpler. But then again, nowadays I have Google at my fingertips. Which I guess, makes things much, much easier. Not sure if you know this but Google actually came about in 1998 and only went public in 2004.
What a whirlwind it’s been since then. It’s now possible to ask the Big G pretty much anything… I decided to start with “what were the best inventions from the 90s?” and here’s what I discovered.
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In 1989, a British guy called Tim Berners-Lee had one of his biggest brain waves ever. He came up with an idea to invent what we now know as the World Wide Web and put this proposal together. But we almost never got to browse the net, because Berner-Lee’s boss marked his proposal as “vague but exciting”. Lucky for all of us, the computer scientist didn’t give up. He used the next few months to refine his plan and by the following year he'd managed to impress his manager.
According to the World Wide Web Foundation, “By October of 1990, Tim had written the three fundamental technologies that remain the foundation of today’s web (and which you may have seen appear on parts of your web browser).” Those are HTML, URI and HTTP. By the end of that year, the first web page was launched and in 1991, the web was opened to the public. Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 "for services to the global development of the Internet". And Bored Panda was launched in 2009. All we can say is, “thank you, Sir!”
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In 1992, another Brit changed our lives forever. In December that year, a 22-year-old software programmer called Neil Papworth sent the world’s first ever sms. He used his computer to send a simple “Merry Christmas” to his colleague’s mobile phone across town. Papworth sparked a global obsession with texting that now sees around 23 billion text messages sent every day. Which brings us to the next 90s invention we never saw coming.
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At the time of the first sms, there weren’t any phones that could both send and receive text messages. That's until Nokia came up with a gadget that would have us messaging our mom in the next room, just because we could. It took a little longer to type than today’s texts. The phones back then only had numbers and no keyboard.
But it wasn’t long before IBM released “Simon”, the world’s first touch screen mobile device. And in 1997, Nokia unveiled the 9000i Communicator, its first full keyboard phone. If you were around in those days you might remember the massive, bulky bricks that could do a fair bit of damage if dropped on your toe.
Since then, we've seen phones in all shapes, colors and sizes. See here for some of the strangest phones ever made. And a shoutout to Blackberry, who released their first phone in 1999 and went on to dominate the market for most of the 2000s before iPhones entered the game.
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One of my favorite memories of childhood was going to the video store on a Friday night with my parents. We’d walk through the aisles, each getting a chance to pick from the hundreds of VHS video tapes available. We had to get there before someone else snatched the latest release. Otherwise we had to wait until the following weekend, or ask the assistant to book it for us. Once we had our videos in hand, we’d have a marathon movie night, and make sure to put the big tapes in the right boxes. We had to drive to the store the next day, to drop them off through a hole in the door. Or face a late return fine. Have a look at how this guy built a makeshift video store in his basement.
The world's first DVD player released in 1996. And the video stores had to quickly also start stocking movies on discs. By 2003, some retailers had stopped selling VHS tapes altogether. Needless to say, the kids of today will never know the struggles we had before streaming became a thing.
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The 1990s also birthed some of the biggest blockbusters. Titanic, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, The Lion King, Forrest Gump and Armageddon all had us glued to our screens. That’s when we weren’t listening to the likes of Nirvana, Snoop Dogg, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Cranberries or Oasis on repeat, on our CD Walkmans. Those, by the way were also launched in the late 90s.
Here's a fun 90s movie quiz to take you on a trip down memory lane.
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You might not have heard of Ken Kutaragi but you probably have heard of the Sony PlayStation. If you love gaming, press pause and thank Kutaragi. He started developing the beloved Playstation in 1990, and it was unveiled the following year. It became the first video game console to sell over 100 million units.
And as ThoughtCo. reported, “The original PlayStation was designed as a multi-media and multi-purpose entertainment unit. Besides being able to play Super Nintendo games, the PlayStation could play audio CDs and could read CDs with computer and video information.” Fast forward to today and Sony says it has 97 million monthly active Playstation users.
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The 90s really shaped the digital era, didn’t it? And it’s hard to imagine where we’d be today if we removed that chunk of history. Even so, we forgive you if you miss the day before social media, mobile phones and google.
Or if you’d rather trip back in time, into your local video store after calling them using an old fashioned dialing telephone. What were your favorite memories of the 1990s and what don’t you miss? Let us know in the comments.
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