I was there and I can tell you that it was genuinely better times.

The 80s and 90s were peak western civilization.

Tech was exciting, futuristic.

Politics - whilst certainly always grubby and adversarial - had not descended into lies and manipulation and misinformation and attempts to destroy the democratic systems.

People talked socialized read books.

Dating hadn’t been turned into a high volume marketplace in which no one is ever satisfied and everyone is always upgrading.

The environment and global warming were an issue for sure but not like now.

It's looking more and more like The Matrix was correct ... the end of the 1990s was peak human civilization.

Economic inequality was relatively low in 60s 70s, and economic growth was high in late 80s and late 90s. That seems to be a good backdrop for human flourishing, not just in science/tech but also in art, music, film etc. Recommend Piketty / Gary's Economics for more opinions on this.

A couple snippets from my own experience / wow points :

  - browsing bookstores was phenomenal, hand illustrated romance, fantasy and sci-fi covers
  - Turbo Pascal, Dr Dobbs journal
  - Wolfenstein and Quake ushered in the era 3D interactive games
  - shareware and file sharing on BBS boards, via dialup modem
  - tapes, then CDs, then minidisc !
  - digital watches, scientific calculators !!
  - double your hard-drive storage every 18months !!!

> People talked socialized read books.

Reading books - perhaps more than they do now, but in the 90's it was already on its way out.

> The 80s and 90s were peak western civilization.

Only if you consider west "civilization" as the US.

I enjoyed things in the 80s and 90s, but many things about it sucked too.

In many ways I like the current times a lot more than this idealized past.