I recall seeing something like that once, cleaning a closet a while ago. Really cheap cars still have manually cranked windows, I think?
The world was mechanical rather than electronic, as Charlie's great example for car windows prove. The unification of Germany was a huge thing. As you've already said no pc, dvd, usb etc. Writing letters was a valid thing to do. You could turn in your school papers written in longhand instead of Times New Roman or whatever. The Gulf War all over the news. We become familiar with the new kind of televised war which is a bit normal now. What with Saddam, Germany, USSR etc, I became aware of CNN that year. The Big Brother idea that everyone is monitored, followed and recorded still seemed too nightmarish to happen. Look at us now! What Charlie said, that people who had seen historic things were still alive, is so true! My grandparents' generation who bridged the gap between the old world and ours. I think the shock was enormous. I feel sorry I didn't ask to learn enough while I still had them... I think that people who take part in important events don't go around talking about it all the time, you have to ask them in order to learn. They have a very different idea about things than us, not to mention a kind of humility and modesty. Being a kid, I once told my grandfather that it was cool he was a soldier of wwii, he had survived the nazi occupation etc, and that he had seen so many things. He said: are you crazy? May God never grant you to live things like that! It was hell! Having a boyfriend was not realy something you told your parents (at least not here) Nor was it that common. It was a secret and boys didn't mind keeping it like that. Love notes were on paper and there was no texting, or whatever it is called. Visiting a library for information was a time-consuming experience. You had to find the books on cards in alphabetical or other order (fight over the cards occasionally...) and then actually read them to find what you want, and then use the xerox machine to get the pages you wanted home. Keeping notes in longhand was also common, only to return home to find you should have written more... On the other hand people tended to be more aware of their surroundings which meant flirting, rather than today's autistic focus on a screen, if you know what I mean. The bad guys were the nazis and the soviets. Very different today. There was still a Yugoslavia but it was the beginning of the end. TV sets were huge compared with modern ones. The photographic cameras had film that you had it developed, no preview and maximum 36 stops. You needed to be aware of the light, the distance etc, and you never really knew what the photo was untill you actually held it in your hand. A ruined film wasn't all that uncommon. That meant wonderful photo albums that seem extinct today. Polaroids were the fast photo of the day. You had to work to get information on things, instead of simply going online.
Ah, yes, I remember the wet picture sliding out, and then waiting for the image to appear. Telephones, of course, sat in people's homes with spiral chords and, instead of buttons, there was a little dial that you'd spin around, with recessed openings for each number. Answering machines were pretty recent, and there were none of the extras (caller id, redial, etc.) Cable TV was still not available in many areas, though those who had it were pretty excited by such new things as MTV and Nickelodeon (which had a popular kid's show, "You can't do that on television," where people got green slime dropped on them.) But many people still had 12 channels (2-13, since #1 wasn't a channel) plus, a UHF dial with rabbit ears you have to adjust to get a fuzzy picture to come in on those odd stations. Fox wasn't a controversial news channel. Instead, it was a brand new network with the popular Married with Children show, and also something else that was new: the Simpsons, which was the first prime time cartoon since the Flintstones way back in the '60s. I'm not sure, but I think you could still catch re-runs of shows like Gilligan's Island, and even old Abbot and Costello movies on the 4:30 movie, though that might have been earlier. Oh, and looking to the future... If you asked people in 1980s-1990 what they thought the world would be like in 2010, they probably would have predicted that we'd have flying cars and weather control devices. They never would have guessed that we'd have cell phones and flat screen TVs though. Here's another one: When police investigated crimes, they pretty much had to go on fingerprints. If you're ever reading a 1980s crime novel, and the police have no clue how to find the killer even though there's blood everywhere that they know is the blood of the killer, the police aren't dumb. DNA was unknown back then. Ah, the card catalog. It helped if you knew the Dewey Decimal system. Yes, and people were still shocked by things like multiracial relationships. Not only was there no talk of "gay marriage" almost nobody talked about gays at all, except disparagingly. There was a lot less equality and a lot more sexism and racism. (Not that those aren't still a problem, and not that there weren't many people who believed in equality, because even then, there were.) The idea of a black President (no one said "African American") was the topic of comedy that nobody took seriously or thought would happen in 100 years, even when Jesse Jackson gave it a try. I still remember Eddie Murphy running across the stage, pretending to be Jesse Jackson as President trying to avoid being shot. Women were only beginning to make strides in jobs, and were more likely to be secretaries than Secretaries of State. (All this of course applies to the USA. Not sure about elsewhere.) Charlie
Interesting insight into what we thought the future would be like... cars are a great example. They really haven't changed nearly as much as I had imagined but if someone told me we would be able to make free video calls,over something called the internet which also gave you access to an indescribable amount of information at the touch of a button, I would have laughed. And cell phones! why oh why would anyone want to carry a phone around all the time - hilarious idea! Did they really think they were so important to need to be contactable all the time? Hanging out in online forums - another hilarious idea! Forming friendships over a computer! Surely only losers would do that! There was the idea that as technology progressed we would work less for the same pay as computers gave us the opportunity to do things (that were time consuming) more quickly. Instead we were simply given more things to do :-(
Picture phones were showcased in the 1964 World's Fair, although they weren't portable, and didn't include music and games. A computer in every home was also envisioned for te year 2000, except it was a terminal to access public mainframes. Dick Tracy had the 2-way wrist radioback then, and later that was upgraded to the 2-way wrist TV. However, we don't have commuter helicopters in every garage, and we don't have colonies in orbit or on the moon. On the other hand, read Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun to see his view of future societies which he considered inviting, even though most people would have considered then bizarre. The society of The Naked Sun was the ultimate extrapolation of Internet society, in which citizens never left their homes, and all social interaction was virtual. Robert Heinlein's Time Enough for Love was based in a society in which zones have been abandoned to chaos and violence, and nothing that happened within those zones was covered by law. These times were foreseen, perhaps more than you know.
It's true, a lot of things were predicted. Sometimes it's funny to read an old science fiction book and see what it got right--and wrong. I read a science fiction book recently (it might have been an Asimov or perhaps an Arthur C. Clarke, I don't recall the title but I read one from each author earlier this year) the book was from the 1950s and it accurately predicted fax machines (it called them 'facsimile machines,' apparently not anticipating the abbreviation) but people were still using typewriters, and they were traveling to cities on other worlds. Dick Tracy's wrist TV was an excellent example for a fairly accurate future-prediction. One thing I find weird about today is that everything is on our phones now. "I need to take a picture, let me see your phone." "What time is it? Let me see your phone." Nobody says, "I need to make a phone call. Let me see your camera (or your watch.)"
Am I the only one who feels as if some of these descriptions don't describe the nineties, but maybe a decade or two before that? I haven't wanted to run around nitpicking a bunch of little things, but some of it sounds a little more like the eighties or even the seventies to me.
I think that even if you are right about a couple of things, most things seem accurate. The year was 1990, but it was still the '80s in so many ways. Plus 'progress' hits various places in different times, even in the same country. Mentality was very different as well. I think it was a world apart. River Phoenix was very popular, Johnny Depp went from being a tv star to becoming a movie star. 1990 was the year... Not to mention Beverly Hills, 90210.
When I think of the 90s I think of Doc Martens and Juicy Fruit bubble gum.. In the UK also, Blur vs Oasis.
You could google some major news or world events that happened in the 1990s and have that particular news cast on the TV in the background to try and set a time for the reader
The O. J. Simpson trial was still in the future, so some people still believed there was such a thing as justice in the courts.
One thing to keep in mind is that 1990 wasn't "the 90s" just like 1960 sure wasn't anything like what people call "the 60s". If anything 1990-91 was a time of resolution, an epilogue if you will, for the events of the 80s.
I still think there's (sometimes) justice in the world, but frankly, though I may be a very small minority, having watched every minute of the trial on television, I would have agreed with the jurors. The presence of EDTA preservative at the crime scene (the preservative used on the blood sample taken from OJ) and also, the magical appearance of blood spots at the crime scene days after the crime, where photographs taken days after the crime show blood spots, and photographs of the same areas of sidewalk taken hours after the crime do not show those same spots, convinced me that the evidence was tampered with. That gave me a huge amount of reasonable doubt. But you do have a point about people believing that there was justice in the world. DNA hadn't been decoded and so, was not yet used in courts in 1990. There were a number of people sitting on death row, many thought justly, that were subsequently proven innocent by DNA evidence. I think the use of DNA evidence was a major change from 1990 to today. Charlie
yes, as someone else pointed out, more or less, 1990 would still be more like the 80's than like the 90's. and my setting is a backwards sort of place where the 90's won't arrive until about 1997, anyway... thanks to everyone for your suggestions and memories. i've seen several things here that will help me.
Yes, Axl Rose showed that very well. The defining thing that I remember about the year 1990 was the slow collapse of the Soviet Union. This is something that I cannot understate, it was a strange feeling of distant change (I am from Australia), the lifting of a terrible threat. The true end wouldn't happen for another year but it was an incredible time.
I was 16, living in San Francisco. Recently immigrated from the "Terrible Threat," the "Evil Empire," etc. The two countries were still thousands of miles apart: the internet was not widely available, though it existed since mid-80's. No well-paid Moscow dwellers, who could just hop over to New York for a weekend. And knowledge of Russian was not enough to get by in Manhattan, IIRC. For one -- I don't think anyone has brought this one up yet -- when I had to fly to New York, my parents were allowed through the security gate with me. Metal detectors were there, but nobody cared if I had gel or shaving cream onboard MC Hammer was to be heard on every corner. Fresh curiosity/anger about Madonna and Bart Simpson. The latter, according to George Bush Sr.,"represented what was wrong with the American youth." Something like that. Captain Picard on Star Trek, with his irresistible hairdo, wasn't that old yet. "Married With Children", "Brady Bunch," "Batman" with Jack Nicholson. You could still drive cars made in the late 70's. Russian immigrants were so afraid of spending an extra penny that they would buy old Fords and Chryslers for around $800-$1000. The gas was 90 cents a gallon. War declared by Panama on the U.S., which sent Noriega to jail. (Geez, I'm OLD. Ugh)
Yes, the difference in travel was huge. I think one still needed a passport to travel in Europe, not to mention there was no euro and you had to do all the exchange thing to travel. There was still a concord, and although there was always the fear of highjacks people were relaxed. So was the control at the airports. Not too relaxed though, but certainly not as it is today. Last Christmas we had to remove even our shoes just to travel from Rome to Athens. Dollar was strong back then, as was the DEM.
There may be differences, but I think more pervading is how much life remains the same. We still drive cars with wheels made of rubber. We still make coffee in the morning in coffee makers that those poor antecedents of the 90's would fully recognize. We still read newspapers made of paper. There are no teleporters. Shoes still look like shoes. We don't wear clothes made of scy-fi looking silver cloth in the form of Cape Canaveral jump suits. We eat food, not pill-form nutritional tabs. We laugh. We play. We fight. We cry. As a survivor of the 90's, I can tell you that save for the fads and snazzy communicators that would make even Capt Kirk jealous (aka cell phones) life remains, by and large, the same.
True, but wasn't it fun to write a note on a tiny scrap of paper, ball it up and throw it, instead of texting? Charlie
I was the master of the origami folded note. Being gay means an honorary pass into girl-world. They taught me much.
The mentality was not the same. People had less fear and more hope, generally speaking. And people depended less on electronic things for their daily life. Lose your mobile phone and see what happens. I remember how life was without mobile phones and internet: less instant information and slower paces, but it was fine. Maybe it's just me though.
Great fun actually. On the other hand who'd have thought that people all over the world would be speaking in real time for no money at all? Provided you don't do that for your actual, real-life friends. The ones you are supposed to meet in a coffee shop rather than chat on-line. There can be so many plot twists because of lack of communication, in the 1990 story our friend is writing.
I was just a wee young lad in the 1990's, but I definitely remember our Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his half frozen face. Reminded me of Two Face from Batman. I was obsessed with Lego and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Grunge rock was starting to pick up, and (my favorite!) the Independant Music scene was born! East coast/West coast rap feuds resulting in the deaths of the arguably two best rappers to ever live, Notorious BIG and Tupac. James Bond's Goldeneye, Starfox, and Mario Kart were the hugest video games ever on N64. In Canada, gas prices were still 59.9 cents a liter. Compared to 2010 where I'm paying 109.9 . We weren't aware that we were destroying our planet with toxins from cars and plants. We still wore weird clothes from the 80's, but it was "different." No offense, but the U.S. started electing some sketchy Presidents. (Bush and Clinton). Napster got sued big time by Metallica(??), and pretty much everybody had a Modem internet connection. Cell phones looked like satellite phones, and cost a ton. That's all I can really think of now, but the 90's were a gooood time. Maybe it's just because I'm nostalgic, but I loved the 90's. EDIT: Pokemon cards, POGS, and scooters were the hugest fads around. Converse all-stars were so cool.
