This is a tremendous piece. It rings so very true.
I was 18 in 1990. I'm undoutebdly rose-tinting it but it was indeed edgy and weird and loaded and cool and unknown and just basically fucking brilliant.
I look at my teen / 20's kids now and although they're brilliant and doing rad things and out there in the world being great - they're also slightly reserved, spoilt for choice, their generation less able to take hard knocks or deal with unknowns. It's kinda sad I think. Here's hoping we'll find ways to get back to more of what's actually real and important and well, sexy...!
The emphasis on embodiment was particularly interesting I think - at least with 90s tech you generally had to push physical buttons to get a response. There was something kinetic about tech use, it felt more like using LEGOs.
Now user interfaces are an exhausting search exercise- I have to watch the screen to see where the buttons will appear with every interaction. It sucks.
It makes me wonder what a physical-first API would look like. Perhaps that's just what CLIs evolved for: reliable, repeatable key-based interactions.
That's a really interesting point. And I guess related - physical media. Saving up for some vinyl or a cassette, going down the shop and adding it to your [physical] collection had a whole bunch of interactions along the way. Meeting your mates, browsing in the record shop, comparing notes, looking at girls, coming home, making a space on your shelf / floor for the new thing, putting it on...
Nowadays: phone + spotify + search = done. No interaction, no flirting, no saving up, no physical-ness...
Entirely (mostly) unrelated but I remember my mate buying a cassette copy of MBV's Loveless [0] from Camden Market. He took it home, listened, decided it was warped (if you know the record this will make sense...!), took it back, got a replacement, took it home... same warped sound. Eventually realised that was what was what it actually sounded like.. Man, we took the piss... :-)
Expanding on this: It's shocking how quietly we accept that using a smartphone means fighting for and against the presence of an on-screen keyboard. Remember the Motorola Droid with its slide out physical keyboard? That was fantastic.
Back in 2002, I was on the hunt for a copy of Primal Rock Therapy by Blood Circus. I would hit every used record store, book store, CD exchange, and thrift store trying to find a copy (I still had unreliable dial up at home, so getting it off the internet was a pipe dream). I eventually found it in a used bin at a Half-price Books in Cleveland after 4 years of searching.
It was a middling album by a middling band, but the satisfaction I felt I still remember 23 years later. Same with the 4-6 weeks delivery from catalogs of the 90s. We no longer have the anticipation and the wonder we did in an analog/scarcity world when everything is on demand.
So I'm of an age with you, and I broadly agree, but I think we can't entirely discount survivor bias, and the sweeping under the carpet of a lot of stuff that people would rather pretend didn't happen, or were glad when it no longer had to.
Case in point - the link between app dating, #MeToo, and the redefinition of sexual harassment/misconduct to incorporate pretty much any sexualised behaviour in the workplace.
Essentially the existence of apps made it _possible_ to redraw boundaries. Something a lot of women were keen to do, having put up with all manner of crap for years - and having listened to their stories, decent men mostly went along with it. Before apps - which carved out a dedicated space for seeking romantic partners - I don't think that would have been the case.
1990 is 35 years ago now, and if you look 35 years prior to that, you're in buttoned-up, conservative 1955. So maybe we GenX were fortunate (or for some, not so much) to live in more morally liberated times, where this stuff could exist in the public sphere before the Weinsteins, Tates and PUAs came along and ruined it all.
As to stuff being swept under the carpet - the allegations against roughly 80% of 90s rock titans, plus film moguls and so on - most women will tell you that's just the tip of the iceberg, so maybe we were overdue for the pendulum to swing the other way.
Like I say, I agree with you about the spirit of things, but equally, well, maybe our definition of sexy belongs to its time, just as prior generations had a different view on all that.
I was 18 in 1990. I'm undoutebdly rose-tinting it but it was indeed edgy and weird and loaded and cool and unknown and just basically fucking brilliant.
I look at my teen / 20's kids now and although they're brilliant and doing rad things and out there in the world being great - they're also slightly reserved, spoilt for choice, their generation less able to take hard knocks or deal with unknowns. It's kinda sad I think. Here's hoping we'll find ways to get back to more of what's actually real and important and well, sexy...!