In 1990, the internet was something used by fantasy baseball fanatics on CompuServe and mobile phones were the size of toddlers — a luxury for those who could afford to not use pay phones. Satellite TV meant having a massive dish on your property; millions struggled with programming their VCRs to tape L.A. Law; bills were paid by check… in the mail.
But of all the developments and advances that have occurred in the years since, which have had the most direct impact on the way you live? Obviously, I wouldn’t have a job — and you would be doing yours right now — if the Internet hadn’t exploded the way it did.
And then there are seemingly smaller things like direct-debit for paying bills, which has helped millions of absent-minded people (yours truly included) stay current on their payments and off the rolls of collection agencies.
Then again there are people we know whose lives aren’t today aren’t that different than they were 20 years ago — folks without cable TV, without cell phones, without digital cameras — and who seem just as happy as the rest of us.
So here’s your chance to tell us about those technologies that have truly changed your life — or how your life really hasn’t changed that much.
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for me its a tie between the snuggie and the kfc double down.
decisions…decisions…
Sliced Bread
Yes those were dark times back in 1990. Having to tear off chunks of bread from a loaf.
The Internet.
Well mine are almost all TV related, as I was just starting my degree in Photography (wich became TV production) in 1990.
- HDTV. Having started with shooting and editing 3/4″ videotape, I never figured on HDTV in the home like we have today.
-DVD. I was dreaming about getting a laserdisc player around that time and never even considered something like DVD.
-DVR. I had a VCR. DVR probably would’ve seemed like witchcraft at the time. And forget Tivo, I’m talking ReplayTV here. (RIP)
My wife and I were just talking about how many little luxuries have come about in the past twenty years. It wasn’t all that long ago that cars didn’t have clocks or cup holders but had lava hot vinyl seats.
Online bill pay.
(re)Invention of 7-11 in Taiwan and Japan! I can just go into one for almost anything I need in life… You can pay your bills there, use the ATM, fax and scan, call taxi, recycle things, send/receive packages… and a lot more… Some stores even got washroom for all the tired travelers…
Prepaid Mastercard also very convenient! Put your money in there and it works like a real credit card. Works perfectly for almost all online shopping needs… Taiwanese prepaid Mastercard do not charge ANY fee EXCEPT currency conversion fees.
The internet, I can communicate with people I would have lost touch with years ago, find a job and answer pretty much any question about anything. I really love it.
DVR, I love this thing. DirecTV is smart to offer it for free for a year when you sign up. I wouldn’t get rid of it for the world now. I almost never watch live tv and never miss a program I want to see.
Amazing.
MP3s, I have more music now than I could ever have ordered from Columbia House. When I hear something I like I can immediately download it (and thanks to the internet) find out more about the band and hear their entire catalog. Playlists for days, I can bring all my music in the car…
Online bill pay and online collaboration. I am the database manager for my company and it would be MUCH different if we didn’t have SaaS and “The Cloud.”
Online billing would probably be it for me, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m young enough to where this has pretty much been par for the course fo rme. I realize it would seem huge if I hadn’t used it for 90% of my bill paying life.
So I’ll go with cellphones, which granted have been around more than 20 years, it wasn’t common. I got my first phone in 1999, and I was the first person I knew who had one. I’m young, but I am old enough to remember having to track down pay phones, or collect calling, but stating my name to be “dad, pick me up” in order to avoid actually paying for the call.
Internet is definitely the biggest affect on my life. Outside work, probably 90% of my social interactions with friends and family is through the internet (email, facebook, MMORPGS, picasso/snapfish, youtube). There’s the ability to pay bills on line, and I love managing my DVR on-line (plus using the internet to watch shows and movies with Netflix). I wouldn’t have met my husband without the internet, or considered moving across the country if I didn’t have the ability to keep in contact so well with my family.
Electronic fuel injection and computerized engine management systems. The days of fiddling with recalcitrant carburetors and finicky points in ignition systems just to keep the daily driver going are long gone, thank goodness…now I only have to do that on classic cars, because I want to…
Email. Hands down.
When my sweetie was deploying to Afghanistan, I knew it it would be days or even weeks before she could get near a phone to call me. But she was able to get on-line and send me an email saying she arrived safely. It was a huge relief and I could go on with my life knowing she was OK rather than worrying.
I remember growing up that my Mom would wait for weeks before hearing from my Dad when he was deploying for missions and back then it was a patch call through a HAM radio operator. My mom used to keep a list of all the questions to ask, never knowing when the call would come in.
In World War II it was a letter that would arrive two months later.
Email also allowed us to work on mundane things, like where are the keys for the cat crate. Then on those precious moments on the phone we could just talk about silly stuff or how our day went.
Email has changed the way soldiers go to war and families back home stay connected.
So email and the Internet gets my vote as the greatest technological change of the last 20 years.
– Steve
Scoopable cat litter. Makes an unpleasant task much more bearable.
20 years ago, I didn’t have a whole lot of responsibility outside of doing the dishes and getting my homework done, since I was 10, but 8-10 years ago, when I first started paying bills, etc., online banking and online billpay was not nearly as ubiquitous as it is now. Having to physically write checks, fill out the bill stubs, put them in the envelope, find stamps and then remember to put them in the mail was a major, major stumbling block to my financial life in my early adulthood. I have ADD and that was just too many things to keep track of and I routinely would remember to write out the bills but forget to send them until after the deadline (or at all…). Point and click and the money’s taken care of? Much, much better. Someday I’ll have a steady salary and I’ll be able to automate things even more and I am so, so looking forward to that day.
Adderall
Th ability to operate a shop on the internet. Instead of being limited to a local market, I have buyers all around the country and the world. I’ve sent out goods to Sweden, Australia, England, Canada and Germany in the past two weeks alone.
Uhhhhhh, the snuggie !!
The Roomba and the Segway.
I’ve been using computers and been on the interwebs for over 20 years, so those don’t qualify. Smartphones are fine and all, but no real sea change.
Pre-Roomba, I shared my home with dustosaurs, but now you could almost eat off the floors on any day.
And the Segway is the best investment I’ve ever made. I use it every day.
Nothing… We were better off twenty years ago. And, smarter too.
ZARVOX SPEAKABLE TEXT!
Since everyone has already said ‘internet,’ I’ll qualify that by saying “high speed internet.” I’m not sure dial-up made my life easier, and if we’d never moved beyond dial-up speed, I think by now we would have collectively flung the internet into the garbage out of sheer frustration.
TIVO and Expedia (substitute alternative brand names if you want, but you get the idea)!
JamHub.
Without JamHub I don’t have the money for band rehearsal space, the patience to haul gear to or from said rehearsal space, or the living arrangements that tolerate band practice in my home.
With JamHub my band gets to exist, and I get to be in a band.
It’s that simple.
Basil White
The Deathbillies
Online Bill Pay and banking. as a person who grew up pretty much never sending a piece of snail mail (I was 5 when my dad Had AOL…The one that didn’t let you go anywhere) The concept of getting a bill in the mail, writing a check, and then mailing it back to the company seems completely alien and pointless, especially when I can pay my cell phone bill, and my cable/internet in about 15 mins online.
Caller i.d.!!! I haven’t had to take a call from my mother-in-law in over 5 years.
Internet banking. I moved back to Utah almost a year ago, but I still do half my banking using my Michigan credit union.
IBM compatible CPUs and Mobos. Platforms rock!
My mom says the rotavirus vaccine has made parenting infants infinitely more pleasant. She could not believe they had a vaccine against it for Mini McGee!
Laser eye surgery or was it around before that? And definitely Tivo, As soon as it came out I bought one.
Easy, the internet. Remember back to the old days when you had to go to a “special” bookstore to get your porn. Every advance in technology for the internet (broadband, streaming video) is because of porn. Thank you.
Wireless router PLUS high speed internet: 20 years ago I would have never even dreamed that I could do my “work work” at home, on my porch, outside…on a laptop computer with my feet propped up. No more being chained to my desk at work 23 miles away from my house. It’s still “work”, but in a much more comfortable and relaxing setting.
Oh, and then there’s the Netflix with the wireless router plus high speed internet
.
Mobile Phone
I telecommute. I am online all day, every work day, with my employer. The office is almost 1000 miles away. I will soon have a VOIP soft phone that will be just another extension of the office phone system. Facebook lets me interact with my co-workers in a friendly, hanging ’round the fax machine kind of way. I couldn’t have done any of this without high-speed internet.
The fact I can comment on this post, sitting out on my balcony with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other (okay, not at this instant, after all, the fingers are typing this comment!) on a laptop connected to absolutely zero wires is the greatest technological advance IMHO. Kudos all around to wireless routers, broadband internet, and laptops. Everything else is a subset of the prior three.
Cellphones (or “smartphones”) have probably got to be at the top of most people’s list. It takes things that have already made our lives easier (phone, computer, internet, gps) and combines them into one. Grant it, smartphones don’t replace pcs entirely, but they make it a lot easier to do things. For example I can check all of my bank info from my phone’s browser instead of waiting to go home to do it.
Probably the internet. Scratch that, definitely the internet. Cellphones have made our lives somewhat easier (since we no longer have to wander in search of payphones) but I was a kid back then so I didn’t make a lot of phone calls anyway.
Every time someone at work asks me a question that I don’t know the answer to (which is like 75% of the questions they ask me), I find the answer on the internet. I can continue to look like a genius!
atm card without a doubt.
I dont know if I could survive without the internet as my bills are all done electronically. I don’t use checks and havent since the ’90s. But if it werent for technology in the medical field, I might not be here today. I was misdiagnosed with stomach cancer and if not for tests involving tiny cameras, I would have undergone chemo etc that wasnt necessary and could have killed me in my weakened state. I had perforating ulcers and that was bad enough but not a death sentence. So I am glad for teeny tiny cameras on a hose.
As compared to 20 years ago, the technology that has most impacted my life are computers and the Internet. Mostly for the better and sometimes for the worse. Living in a rural area having the ability to shop online or use E-Bay to get stuff has been great. It has meant cheaper prices and more choices. Sure beats long drives or catalogs. Also the instant access to information, news, and being able to pay bills and stuff online. Drawbacks have been privacy is a lot less than it was 20 years ago and that you need to be careful with what you share online. Still have a VCR, No Cable TV, and dial up Internet. That is what makes it hard living in rural America sometimes.
Yes, I live in the boonies (the long stretch of route 460 between Richmond and Suffolk, VA) and we just got high speed internet last year. Before that, I had to go to the one room library in the old (pretty much abandoned) school, sit in the hallway and use the wifi, or drive 45 minutes to Starbucks for decent internet. I learned how to keep youtube videos so I could watch them on iTunes when I got home.
I’d also nominate digital cameras. We never remembered to take our film or our disposable cameras to the drug store to get them developed growing up (I’m 27). We have a bag of disc film that will never see the light of day (its too expensive to get them developed from those companies online). So we have no photos from like the late 1980s to 1991 when mom bought a polaroid.
My iphone, before the iPhone I had no interest in cell phones. I had a pay as you go virgin mobile phone. Also, my MacBook.
The universal remote control.
I’d have to say the Internet.
–It helped me in school.
–I met my bf online.
–It provides me with hours of entertainment.
–I’ve found my last three jobs online.
–I keep in touch with people through email and Facebook, without which I would have to spend hundreds of dollars on phone calls.
–I’ve been able to learn things I need to know to prepare for a career change and not have to speed-read books because they have to go back to the library, wait for inter-library loans for books I need to read, or spend hours copying material either by hand or pay to use a copier.
–If I decide to move, I can check out jobs, apartments, social life, etc. for anyplace in the world I want to live, without leaving my couch.
If my internet goes down I throw a fit like I’ve lost a limb. I literally couldn’t live without it. It’s made communication and research so much more efficient. I could make an equal case for how much my computer by itself is a help, but it’s ten times better with the internet.
Tossup between mobile phone and online banking.
Sham-wow, without a doubt.
highspeed internet + wifi allows all computers online to facilitate research, social and amusement both personal, business and scholarly. able to reserve books, email family, games plus check on school assignments. met majority of my friends using it and able to keep in touch with the bf.
cellphones no more scavenging to find payphones when you need to get hold of people plus texting makes for easier finding people and if anything is needed.
mp3 players lots of lovely music and very little weight asides from spare batteries depending on how fast it goes through them makes time on the bus much more pleasant.
Photoshop.
Two things:
The PC, because before they came along, I used to have to write my fiction long-hand in notebooks or type them on a typewriter (what’s that?!) with carbon paper–no kidding–and rekey entire pages of text during rewrites. But now it’s as simple as cut & paste and delete.
The iPod, because I no longer have to lug around big books full of CDs that would be a major disaster if lost or stolen.
I think for me it is the cell phone. I travel a lot to visit family and cell phones have made my life better because I can keep everyone informed where I am and when I’ll get there. Plus I have the safety of the cell phone in case of an emergency. Besides I can now text my grand kids to stay caught up in their lives.