do you think it had as cool a vibe, or was it kind of lame in the same way the 00's was? it seems like a less "wacky" time overall, more down to earth, but when i think about it, pop culture was a lot more respectable then, and there was still quite a bit more old fashioned-ness hung over, even though the 90s is really when casual culture took off to the average person.

“Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization."
 - Agent Smith, The Matrix, 1999

Pre-9/11 America was the peak of Western civilization.  We'd beaten the commies (our old enemy from the 50s-80s) without a single nuke.  We had all the materialism of the 80s and gigahertz-clocked computers.  It was the end of history and the start of something that could have been really neat.

Except that someone hadn't been reading the fine print on a certain memo, and while history probably wouldn't have ended, at least it wouldn't have had to suck so hard.  I mean, I start out with a perfectly functional quantum loop temporal realizer, and I still manage to get myself stuck in a reality in which The End of History ended on 9/11.  And I left all my spare parts in the timeline that ddn't suck.  Two friggin' years.  That's all I got out of the 90s.  What a crappy timeline!  (So help me, if I ever figure out how to fix the damn thing, I'll show y'all what a magical time was supposed to be...)

Francis Fukuyama's premise was as arrogant as you could get.  He might as well have waved the American flag to a rousing chorus of "We Are the Champions."  Tom Friedman comes in second.  While think tank scholars were oohing and ahhhing over cyber technology and the ever-rising stock market, billions of people on this planet were struggling to secure a meager existence on fifty cents a day.  I saw no "End of History."  What I saw was a bunch of smug corporate booster clubbers have a circle jerk.  Ain't no "End of History."  

Pride comes before a fall.  The British had much the same attitude in 1913.  It looked like the gravy train was never gonna end.  A generation later, the Brits were finished as an imperial power.  

Now it's America's turn.

The difference is nobody bombed us into oblivion.  We were only too happy to vote for Reagan and Clinton.  Take a bus through Camden or Detroit today, and you'll think there was a blitzkrieg!  You can't sustain economic hegemony by trading derivatives and borrowing billions of dollars year in year out from Red China.
 http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/02/buck.gif

Francis Fukuyama's premise was as arrogant as you could get.  He might as well have waved the American flag to a rousing chorus of "We Are the Champions."  Tom Friedman comes in second.  While think tank scholars were oohing and ahhhing over cyber technology and the ever-rising stock market, billions of people on this planet were struggling to secure a meager existence on fifty cents a day.  I saw no "End of History."  What I saw was a bunch of smug corporate booster clubbers have a circle jerk.  Ain't no "End of History."  

Pride comes before a fall.  The British had much the same attitude in 1913.  It looked like the gravy train was never gonna end.  A generation later, the Brits were finished as an imperial power.  

Now it's America's turn.

The difference is nobody bombed us into oblivion.  We were only too happy to vote for Reagan and Clinton.  Take a bus through Camden or Detroit today, and you'll think there was a blitzkrieg!  You can't sustain economic hegemony by trading derivatives and borrowing billions of dollars year in year out from Red China.
 http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/02/buck.gif


Things will turn around.

Francis Fukuyama's premise was as arrogant as you could get.  He might as well have waved the American flag to a rousing chorus of "We Are the Champions."


So what was the downside? :)


You can't sustain economic hegemony by trading derivatives and borrowing billions of dollars year in year out from Red China.  http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/02/buck.gif


Sure you can.  You can:

- get lucky and foil the plot by either disappearing the bad guys before they get to the airport.
- have a very bad day, but say "keep calm and carry on", like the Brits did (before they got pussified in the '00s) against the IRA, because a billion dollars' worth of real estate and a few thousand people every few years is pretty cheap compared to losing a land war in Asia (or in the UK's case, turning Britain into Orwell's vision of Airstrip One).

Heck, even if you've gotta have a war, you could also:

- go with Shinseki's "nope, gonna need a few hundred thousand troops" and save Rumsfield's "transformational" gamble for the next war, you know, when, the magic technology's actually there.
- scrap the "transformation" idea altogether, because most of what passed for "transformation" was merely the government's version of off-balance-sheet financing.  Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines will work for a lot less per hour than mercenariescontractors do, because unlike contractors, volunteers can't say "no, not unless you pay me more".  But they show up on the budget, and Blackwater didn't, so depending on whose spreadsheet you were looking at, there was a cost savings to be had, even though it was completely illusory.
- go a little crazy and do that whole "total war" thing and win it in a weekend.  Winners never have to face the Hague :)

The damn war, even if it was supposed to have been fought, was supposed to have been over in 2004, not 201x.  ROI of a $100B/year war is pretty good if you start in 2003 and end in 2005, and draw $20+B/year of oil out of it.  Doesn't exactly make financial sense if you're still blowing $100B+ per year in 2010, no matter how much oil you get out.

And while Friedman has a point with his revamped version ("No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain") is kinda grasping at straws.  If the world is indeed flat, it doesn't matter if part of the supply chain vanishes, because (with apologies to John Gilmore) the global supply chain interprets war as damage and routes around it.

Anyways, water under the bridge.  The 90s were magical because no two countries with a McDonald's franchise had ever gone to war with one another, so we thought we'd put all that settling-our-differences-by-killing-each-other behind us.  It was a good time.

do you think it had as cool a vibe, or was it kind of lame in the same way the 00's was? it seems like a less "wacky" time overall, more down to earth, but when i think about it, pop culture was a lot more respectable then, and there was still quite a bit more old fashioned-ness hung over, even though the 90s is really when casual culture took off to the average person.


It was the last 'magical' decade we'll have in a long time. The 00's is lacking in comparison and I doubt the 2010's will be magical. It'll be a long time before we have another era like the 50s-90s.

Francis Fukuyama's premise was as arrogant as you could get.  He might as well have waved the American flag to a rousing chorus of "We Are the Champions."  Tom Friedman comes in second.  While think tank scholars were oohing and ahhhing over cyber technology and the ever-rising stock market, billions of people on this planet were struggling to secure a meager existence on fifty cents a day.  I saw no "End of History."  What I saw was a bunch of smug corporate booster clubbers have a circle jerk.  Ain't no "End of History."  

Pride comes before a fall.  The British had much the same attitude in 1913.  It looked like the gravy train was never gonna end.  A generation later, the Brits were finished as an imperial power.  

Now it's America's turn.

The difference is nobody bombed us into oblivion.  We were only too happy to vote for Reagan and Clinton.  Take a bus through Camden or Detroit today, and you'll think there was a blitzkrieg!  You can't sustain economic hegemony by trading derivatives and borrowing billions of dollars year in year out from Red China.
 http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/02/buck.gif



I think it is funny that alot of people expect the 21st century to be alot like the 20th, they'll be in for a rude awakening, most of our economic system is unsustainable, unless we can find infinite energy and resources.

1945-2001 had a good vibe. We'll be talking about the "Good Old Days"...and that would mean 1945-2001.

And after 9/11/2001...everything with pop culture just fizzled. No one had originality...it was all just a sellout!

1945-2001 had a good vibe. We'll be talking about the "Good Old Days"...and that would mean 1945-2001.

And after 9/11/2001...everything with pop culture just fizzled. No one had originality...it was all just a sellout!



I think when we continue to advance into the future, anything pre-9/11 is going to be looked at as "the good ol' days", at least to those who can remember a pre-9/11 world.

I think when we continue to advance into the future, anything pre-9/11 is going to be looked at as "the good ol' days", at least to those who can remember a pre-9/11 world.


People have been using the phrase 'the good old days' since the phrase was invented. I think I would rather live in 2010 than 1867.  :)

People have been using the phrase 'the good old days' since the phrase was invented. I think I would rather live in 2010 than 1867.  :)




Very, very true.

People have been using the phrase 'the good old days' since the phrase was invented. I think I would rather live in 2010 than 1867.  :)




I believe the phrase "Good Old Days" was introduced sometime in the first quarter of the 18th Century, as the oldest I could find online was a 1726 book about the political state of Great Britain. Still, we must live for today as the Grass Roots sang, and take for what it's worth. Many people in Asia will get nostalgic for this era down the road and feel they are living in a "magical" era. The phrase didn't become a common expression until around 1835, and usage continued to grow through the remainder of the 19th and 20th centuries, with usage of this term seeming to peak in the 1990s, with a slight decline in recent years, but still a commonly used term for describing a past era.

I believe the phrase "Good Old Days" was introduced sometime in the first quarter of the 18th Century, as the oldest I could find online was a 1726 book about the political state of Great Britain. Still, we must live for today as the Grass Roots sang, and take for what it's worth. Many people in Asia will get nostalgic for this era down the road and feel they are living in a "magical" era. The phrase didn't become a common expression until around 1835, and usage continued to grow through the remainder of the 19th and 20th centuries, with usage of this term seeming to peak in the 1990s, with a slight decline in recent years, but still a commonly used term for describing a past era.


Very knowledgeable of you. Thank you!

I believe the phrase "Good Old Days" was introduced sometime in the first quarter of the 18th Century, as the oldest I could find online was a 1726 book about the political state of Great Britain. Still, we must live for today as the Grass Roots sang, and take for what it's worth. Many people in Asia will get nostalgic for this era down the road and feel they are living in a "magical" era. The phrase didn't become a common expression until around 1835, and usage continued to grow through the remainder of the 19th and 20th centuries, with usage of this term seeming to peak in the 1990s, with a slight decline in recent years, but still a commonly used term for describing a past era.


Otto Bettmann made a book about The 'Good ol' Days', it's called...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512X01WWYVL.jpg

It mentions how The Victorian Times weren't about driving a new thing called a car, eating elegant meals, living in nice big houses, and wearing fine clothing....

It mentions how people tried to survive everyday living. Making food that lasts an entire day, people throwing sheesh all over the street, and even the meek were overlooked!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bEu9wLDjKY

;D