weird nostalgia
Jun. 15th, 2022 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
palusbuteoI seem to be going through a shift in my nostalgic tendencies
Yeah, I have moments where I take deep dives and reminisce about my 1980s childhood, mostly on the (crazy) TV Cartoon shows & toylines that was just part of the support structure of our childhoods (for better/worse)
But the last handful of years, I seem to be yearning/remembering/waxing nostalgic for the 1990s more so than the 1980s.
I'm sure part of it is b/c I was a young adult through the 90s and had a slightly better mindset and perception of what was going on in the World. Although compared to all the bullshit we've been handed and spoonfed the last 20 years, the more I look back at the 90s, the more it seems like those days might possibly be the good ol days in some ways.
fashion & esthetic were kind of a mess, thanks to the weirdo and colors of the 80s. I'm still sort of surprised seeing how prevalent shoulder pads were, and the "elongated V" outline of the fashion.
Some of the print and media design conventions in the late 90s seemed to be pretty pleasant and most of the time wasn't taking too much gigantic leaps off the deep end with bright vivid colors or weird squiggly lines and triangular shapes and dot patterns and whatnot. But also wasn't this weird bastard child of wood panelling and bland simplistic/minimalistic stuff from the very late 70s and through the 80s.
Although I admit the prevalence of white background for print and document media seemed to be kinda overused, but then the graytones and shadows obsession in par with 3D rendering / 3D lighting effects of everything in the late 90s was equally annoying and eye-roll inducing.
computers & internet & tech of course were the major component to the 90s, especially the latter 90s going into 2000. Lots of promise. And lots of constant changes.
I just saw a video graphic on LinkedIn showing on a circle graph the different Internet Browsers in use/popularity since 1994, and I had forgotten how dominant Netscape was for years.
And that got me thinking a bit bout Back Then. I seemed to have liked Netscape and it seemed to be really outperforming vs Excel. Although I never ended up using Netscape on my own. (we had Q-Link and then AOL at home until about 2004ish) The College I went to had it on their desktops, which they couldn't buy enough fast enough to replace their aging Digital VT400 Terminal in dedicated computer rooms, and Rainbow 100's that were in the Dorm buildings. Although in an ironic twist, with Microsoft fucking around in the early 2000s, apparently a number of colleges couldn't afford the ridiculous license fees so they started switching back to the antiquated mainframe system, which was also apparently more reliable and easier to work with/fix than dozens of small scale desktops. Whodathunk.
Anyway. One thing I always liked and sometimes miss about the 90s computer stuff is both Netscape and Windows 9.0 with the "soft/medium" blues or turquoise color scheme for the background and window accents etc. Although it took a short while but I adapted to the soft grays and bluish-gray scheme since around 2008ish.
Tech was interesting in the 90s, too, being that a lot of it was pitiful and had trouble with the existing infrastructure, and then would trade places with that infrastructure becoming incompatible with the aging programs and interfaces. The last 8-10 years now it seems like everything has been pretty consistent (more or less). Although it wasn't without its frustrations and headaches. Like how there was a newer more powerful Intel processor every other year so the top-line model desktop you bought one year was totally outclassed within 1-2 years.
It's not to say that today's internet isn't great. I think it's mindblowingly awesome compared to only a few years ago, the amount of information, and there are here some specific and niche areas of historical research, for instance, that will appeal to a certain crowd and not necessarily another, but what's available now is lightyears better than what was accessible only a few years ago.
And we had a Compaq computer with MS Encarta. Yeah.
Although without all the cheesy framework and graphics gimmicks, I seem to remember Encarta somewhat fondly even with it being very limited in what it had for actual information.
And yeah we had Britannica in actual-book form at the school and town libraries. But this was on CD-ROM! WHOAAAA!
But in either case, going back to that graph video, I keep going back to thinking about the color pallet and design of Netscape and others, and how it fit in with the aesthetic of the times. And I seem to feel it was pretty darned good for what it was. Today's higher resolution and detail is pretty boss, don't get me wrong!
Thinking a little too about Pop/TV Media and the interior design of sets and things and how that reflected the 90s too. Off the top of my head I think of the TV show Frasier and the use of wood panelling and the use of the browns and tans, framed or accented with blacks, as the color theme just seemed to scream early 1990s, that eventually saw some colors, although more muted than say the screaming bright colors from the early 80s and early 90s
>shrug
Yeah, I have moments where I take deep dives and reminisce about my 1980s childhood, mostly on the (crazy) TV Cartoon shows & toylines that was just part of the support structure of our childhoods (for better/worse)
But the last handful of years, I seem to be yearning/remembering/waxing nostalgic for the 1990s more so than the 1980s.
I'm sure part of it is b/c I was a young adult through the 90s and had a slightly better mindset and perception of what was going on in the World. Although compared to all the bullshit we've been handed and spoonfed the last 20 years, the more I look back at the 90s, the more it seems like those days might possibly be the good ol days in some ways.
fashion & esthetic were kind of a mess, thanks to the weirdo and colors of the 80s. I'm still sort of surprised seeing how prevalent shoulder pads were, and the "elongated V" outline of the fashion.
Some of the print and media design conventions in the late 90s seemed to be pretty pleasant and most of the time wasn't taking too much gigantic leaps off the deep end with bright vivid colors or weird squiggly lines and triangular shapes and dot patterns and whatnot. But also wasn't this weird bastard child of wood panelling and bland simplistic/minimalistic stuff from the very late 70s and through the 80s.
Although I admit the prevalence of white background for print and document media seemed to be kinda overused, but then the graytones and shadows obsession in par with 3D rendering / 3D lighting effects of everything in the late 90s was equally annoying and eye-roll inducing.
computers & internet & tech of course were the major component to the 90s, especially the latter 90s going into 2000. Lots of promise. And lots of constant changes.
I just saw a video graphic on LinkedIn showing on a circle graph the different Internet Browsers in use/popularity since 1994, and I had forgotten how dominant Netscape was for years.
And that got me thinking a bit bout Back Then. I seemed to have liked Netscape and it seemed to be really outperforming vs Excel. Although I never ended up using Netscape on my own. (we had Q-Link and then AOL at home until about 2004ish) The College I went to had it on their desktops, which they couldn't buy enough fast enough to replace their aging Digital VT400 Terminal in dedicated computer rooms, and Rainbow 100's that were in the Dorm buildings. Although in an ironic twist, with Microsoft fucking around in the early 2000s, apparently a number of colleges couldn't afford the ridiculous license fees so they started switching back to the antiquated mainframe system, which was also apparently more reliable and easier to work with/fix than dozens of small scale desktops. Whodathunk.
Anyway. One thing I always liked and sometimes miss about the 90s computer stuff is both Netscape and Windows 9.0 with the "soft/medium" blues or turquoise color scheme for the background and window accents etc. Although it took a short while but I adapted to the soft grays and bluish-gray scheme since around 2008ish.
Tech was interesting in the 90s, too, being that a lot of it was pitiful and had trouble with the existing infrastructure, and then would trade places with that infrastructure becoming incompatible with the aging programs and interfaces. The last 8-10 years now it seems like everything has been pretty consistent (more or less). Although it wasn't without its frustrations and headaches. Like how there was a newer more powerful Intel processor every other year so the top-line model desktop you bought one year was totally outclassed within 1-2 years.
It's not to say that today's internet isn't great. I think it's mindblowingly awesome compared to only a few years ago, the amount of information, and there are here some specific and niche areas of historical research, for instance, that will appeal to a certain crowd and not necessarily another, but what's available now is lightyears better than what was accessible only a few years ago.
And we had a Compaq computer with MS Encarta. Yeah.
Although without all the cheesy framework and graphics gimmicks, I seem to remember Encarta somewhat fondly even with it being very limited in what it had for actual information.
And yeah we had Britannica in actual-book form at the school and town libraries. But this was on CD-ROM! WHOAAAA!
But in either case, going back to that graph video, I keep going back to thinking about the color pallet and design of Netscape and others, and how it fit in with the aesthetic of the times. And I seem to feel it was pretty darned good for what it was. Today's higher resolution and detail is pretty boss, don't get me wrong!
Thinking a little too about Pop/TV Media and the interior design of sets and things and how that reflected the 90s too. Off the top of my head I think of the TV show Frasier and the use of wood panelling and the use of the browns and tans, framed or accented with blacks, as the color theme just seemed to scream early 1990s, that eventually saw some colors, although more muted than say the screaming bright colors from the early 80s and early 90s
>shrug
