Early 2000s were peak of humanity

The OP doesn't claim the it was the peak of humanity, the claim is much tighter than that: it was the perfect balance of technology usage.

Almost universally, any time closer to today is better for most people in most ways than a previous time. But there are exceptions -- prehistoric hunter/gatherer lifestyle is superior in several ways to the modern one, but the risk of dying early in a horrible way is high enough that it's not true overall.

Should we live more like cavemen in very constrained specific ways? Probably. Do we want to force 8 billion people to starve to death by returning to that life? Heck no.

Similar, there are likely small parts of the 2000's that are better than today. That doesn't mean the 2000's are the peak of humanity.

Doubt that Gen Z or α will have that opinion

Perhaps so, but it was a really nice time.

The Iron Curtain had fallen; there was hope for Russia to become a democracy, and the weight of living in fear of dying in a nuclear war was lifted. China was becoming, perhaps not democratic, but at least economically liberal.

The economy was doing reasonably well for most people - it wasn't the high inflation of the eighties, and 2008 was not yet on the horizon. It wasn't yet the two-level economy that it became - if you were lower class, there was still a plausible route to the middle class.

AIDS was becoming manageable rather than a death sentence. Climate change wasn't really on people's radar as a real worry yet - there wasn't a sense of doom about it.

There was still hope that technology would free and empower us rather than enslave us.

And no, I wasn't a teenager or in my early twenties. Though I did have a pretty sweet life then...

What is truly unfortunate is that even if there was an objective way of looking at history, people would just dismiss it as "oh, shut up, it's just nostalgia." Being unable to be objective doesn't invalidate the argument.

So what if the early 2000s were, in fact, the peak of humanity? It doesn't seem so absurd when teenage people today rediscover 90s/2000s fashion and are nostalgic for an era they have never lived in. When I was a teenager in the 2000s I didn't give a rat's arse about the 80s, they felt old and stale and with terrible hairdos. Yet today young people yearn for the 00s aesthetic [1] than whatever sanitised corporate hell we live in today.

Maybe people aren't nostalgic for their teenage years in particular, but for a world that wasn't ruled by the Internet and computers. When the Internet wasn't an infinite plane of corporate capitalism ruling the world, coercing people to jack in the hamster wheel every minute of their lives through their smartphones.

1: provided you are in the same algorithmic bubble of mine full of late teens/early adult people finding joy in analog experiences away from technology.

Every generation has their “good ole days.” Unfortunately the old days never were that good for people who were around at the time.

I actively avoid using navigation. If I’ve already been there once I’ll just try get there without it.

Sometimes I check the route on Google maps first to get an idea, then close it.

I think navigation is like a muscle and you’ve got to train it.

Though I do like rerouting depending on traffic conditions. I guess in some cities that would basically feel mandatory to use

I used to do this a long time ago just because that's how my brain would process how I'm talking on AIM/ICQ. Though I wouldn't add the period at the end of each new line, that is weird.

It's how everyone with a smartphone learns how to write these days. Editing large blocks of text on a smartphone is still extremely annoying, so people get used to hitting send between every few words.

Yimspeak.

This was how I learnt to write, as it's how I think.

I latter learnt in school that writing is only deemed correct when it's stylised into elaborate sentences structures that no human would use when thinking in their own heads.

If you're just trying to convey a thought I don't know why people care?

Could you not understand the point OP was making or something? In what way is this a less valid way of writing (aside from the fact it's not what's taught as correct in school?)

I think it started on LinkedIn, where posts got more reach depending on how many users clicked the 'See More' expander link, so users who wanted to be 'Thought Leaders' were incentivised to present their banal ideas using as many newlines as possible.

None of the sequelae of that have really improved since then, at least as far as the first world is concerned. The foundations of universal surveillance were being laid down, but it wasn’t yet feasible. Police (transport security, border patrol, potato, pot-ah-to) ruffling through your belongings had not yet been normalized. You could transact with cash. People largely still sort of believed that talking to your political opponents would lead to better outcomes than making them comply under threat of government violence or unemployment.

(Plenty of things sucked, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that a lot of the fallout from the “war on terror” was still in the upper atmosphere.)

By year 2000, there were "proprietary" messengers aplenty - yahoo, aim, icq, qq, and a bunch more. All of which were simple enough to reverse engineer, so Linux user could just install Gaim (later renamed Pidgin) and connect to most any of those.

What's more, there were already two open standards: SIP/SIMPLE, and newer XMPP.

> we're awash in incredible hardware that would be mind-blowing if we weren't so constantly distracted with how much noise and bother the software makes.

This is the part of it that bums me out the most. I just wish aesthetics didn't drive so much of the current tech world. Everything has an absolutely beautiful interface now that is slow, buggy, can't be shared, etc. But I guess at least it's pretty and pays the bills.

Big Tech is nefarious, but not the only force to blame. I think that modern internet use would be inferior to the early millennium regardless, just because people's main interface these days is the smartphone with its small screen and keyboard, and that tends to discourage long-form text and nuance. If you look at libre corners of the internet, they have seen that decline nearly as much as corporate platforms.

Despite the article title, it's clearly about technology usage patterns roughly 25 years ago being a lot better than they are today. Its obviously from the PoV of someone in a developed western country, probably America. Every single time someone brings up positive things about the past there's always some 'Nuh uh, look at how bad this thing you weren't a part of was at that time.'. Boring, pedantic, and not even relevant to what the article is about.

Early 2000s in my corner of Eastern Europe (Romania) was a very optimistic time. Higher salaries for locally employed educated people were on the horizon, while there was also the ability to work seasonally abroad and make a good sum that could be invested back home. Infrastructure started to see improvement through EU funds. And, to relate this to the linked post, lots of citydwellers then got broadband and found the internet transformational and positive for their lives.

In fact, it was a far more optimistic time than since about 2020, as soaring cost of food and going out means even privileged middle-class people are complaining, and infrastructure improvements have stagnated.

Agree 100%

One of the best books I’ve ever read, extremely enlightening.

> Indeed go ask anybody in China, India, North-Africa, or Eastern Europe.

I've had pretty good time in "Eastern" (Central) Europe, so did my wife in China.

People were still optimistic about EU/euro, that lasted roughly until Lisbon treaty when they forced Ireland to repeat the referendum until they got result they wanted, which later become EU's MO and since then it went all downhill, with another major successes as Wir schaffen das 2015, Green deal 2020 or Totalitarian COVID pass 2021. Hard to understand someone who can still support this failed project. I would just dissolve it and return back to EEA.

Next time maybe ask actually people from those countries instead of parroting some writer.