Everyday life improvements since the 90s (2022)

Some more not mentioned in the article:

Filtered milk. Tastes the same as ordinary homogenized milk but double (or better) the shelf life. Very convenient if you only use small quantities at a time, e.g. for adding to tea.

Microfiber cloths. Much better cleaning than traditional cloths. In many cases all you need is water, or use them dry for dusting. Reusable too.

SSDs. In my opinion, the biggest computer upgrade in my lifetime. Access latency goes from obvious to imperceptible. A great many interactive tasks involve waiting for IO, and this is far more pleasant when you don't feel the delay.

Cheap but transparent audio DACs/amplifiers. This is essentially a solved problem at headphone power levels. Most modern designs have zero perceptible noise or distortion.

> No More Coupon Scams: most people recognize rebates/coupons are scams, and the rise of discounters/warehouse stores/Internet shopping has largely obviated them

This one got much worse: now you have to install an app (fast food) and/or join a data-harvesting "loyalty program" (grocery stores, Target, others) to get what should be the normal menu prices instead of the batshit crazy list prices. This affects most of the same places that had coupons (plus, actually, there are still tons of coupons? I don't really understand this item)

Fact: In the 1990s a reasonable capable computer was a significant expense on the order of $1K, and likely to be obsolete within 5 years. My best present laptop is 5 years old and perfectly capable and was free because its previous owner didn't want it any more because of a minor defect. That's an exception, but the fact is, being somewhat tolerant to less than state-of-the-art computers, I haven't bought a new one, or spent significant $$ on a used one, for decades.

On the other hand, the cluttered desktop does involve some nostalgia. The ergonomics of a desk phone were better than any smart phone or Teams app can provide, in terms of quickly making or answering a call. And long into the paperless era, I still keep pencils and scrap paper for quick sketches even though my work computer has a freakishly expensive Microsoft Visio on it and you can get adequate drawing software right in your web browser for nothing.

Simply not being reachable because you weren't near a known phone... that has its upsides and downsides. I'm not entirely sure that being on the "elecronic leash" 24/7 has made life better. Especially as I get older, I kind of miss the slower pace things used to have, where you walked over to someone's desk to ask questions, where "google" took the form of calling people or companies and asking (and they had knowledgeable people answering the phones, etc). The world functioned, and pretty well, back then too.

I love this article, it really point out a lot of things we take for granted. It's easy to focus on the bad and forget how much things have really improved.

The one line about the EU made me laugh though:

> EU: the European Union & single Euro currency make the EU easier to understand & travel in it much less tricky and expensive

The fact that it just says this in passing from the perspective of a tourist and without any addendum like "And countless other improvements for Europeans brought about by EU regulation" makes me think of that famous New Yorker cover~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Ave...

Other food:

- Mangoes went from unknown/exotic in the US to being a standard fruit in your produce aisle.

- it’s surprising how cars in the 80s didn’t actually have cup holders. I always thought that was just a joke until I bought an 80s car and learned I’d need to buy the cup holders aftermarket

- frozen vegetables overtaking canned vegetables

- sugar free sodas

I was born in 1996 but I really love the past. 90% percent of the music that I listen to is from before 1990; I have a typewriter and I really find it fun to use it; I have some vinyl records; I have two SNES (one I that we have at home since the 90s and another that I found for sale); half of the movies that I watch were released before the 90s; I have a cuckoo clock working in my living room; I have a street atlas in my car and thanks I'm poor because of course if had money I would have spent it buying an old car.

But know what? Probably I'm happier living in 2020s. Technology allows me to watch more 80s movies that I would do if I lived in the 80s; it allows me to know more 80 bands than most of people who I know that actually lived in the 80s; I'm not restricted to watch only 80s movies or listen to 80s music, I have available everything from the 90s, 70s, 60s, 50s and so on; using a mechanical typewriter is fun but it might be a nightmare needing to use it. And so on.

In fact, I love the past because the present allows me.

With the exception of cellphones, almost everything that needed a battery in the 90s used disposable dry cell batteries. Left unattended they often leaked destroying the device. Now almost everything that needs a battery has a rechargeable one built in.

There are a few downsides to that but it's a hell of a lot more convenient! As a kid in the 70s/80s any battery powered toy spent most of it's life unpowered and useless (except coin-cell powered LCD devices which always seemed to be immortal)

International communication!

I lived across the atlantic for many years, and was able to call with people important to me every day, for free, even with video.

Further, I can have a cultural exchange and shared cultural reference points with billions of people across the planet.

It’s a nice list, but honestly, none of these improvements are really life changing (except the reduction in crime that has been noticeable and good). Things otherwise got a bit nicer and a bit cheaper and a bit faster - but life would have been just fine without these improvements.

Some of these "improvements" seem highly tilted towards the experiences of wealthy people in the suburbs. Here in the lower half of the income distribution in a major city, we still don't have AC, use gas stoves (and often start fires), get our car windows smashed more often (though instead of stealing the stereo, they steal the change in the center console and your extra clothes in the trunk), and instead of the car being stolen while you're gone, it gets stolen while you're in it -- at gunpoint! Car alarms go off all the time as well; still as much a part of the city audioscape as police sirens.

Ordering a mattress online is great, though.

Agreement with the list:

Induction Stoves. We've switched to an induction stove and love it. We cook a lot and I'm fairly sensitive to gas. The air quality in the house is so much better after doing a lot of cooking, but also the second order effects. No more face and arms feeling singed after looking over 3 flame burners. No more sauces getting singed on the side of pots or pots being burned on the sides due to gas. No more concern over draping clothing or hair singing. Fast heating times and a cooktop that doesn't stay hot for too long after you remove the pot.

More stuff I'd like to see on the list:

Digital Photography and Videography. Now a single person or a few people can do what used to take an entire staff to do. Short films and CGI are viable with just a few people. A photographer can take pictures of events that used to take studios with photo lighting to handle.

Disagreements with the list:

Ubiquitous HVAC use is more of a curse than a blessing. Ubiquitous HVAC has led to badly ventilated, badly designed apartments/houses that need constant HVAC usage to even be moderately livable. Central HVACs also often cannot deal with hot/cold areas in the house. Awareness is growing over the need for clean indoor air and that people enjoy air CFMs higher than most guidelines purport. Along with growing use of mini-split HVACs, ERVs and HRVs, this is a great direction. But too many cheap homes throughout the world are designed only around blind central or single unit HVAC use and that is just bad IMO.

Some of the improvements on the list are non-issues best described as cultural differences. Consider:

…not making a dozen phone calls playing Phone Tag, to set up something as simple as a play date

Well this is why hardly anyone was bothering with setting up play dates back in the day† and were letting kids roam. Different culture facilitated by poor connectivity and scarcity of content.

† The title says the 90s but many references in the text go back to 1980s.