Early 2000s were peak of humanity

Premise

I genuinely believe that the early 2000s were probably the closest humanity ever got to the perfect balance between technology and actual life.

We had enough technology to make our lives easier.

But not enough technology to make it annoying.

And that distinction matters.

Just enough

You had a mobile phone.

It could call people.

It could send SMS messages.

Maybe it had a shitty camera.

Maybe you could play Snake.

That was basically it.

And you know what?

It was enough.

The Internet was already there. You could search for things. You could send emails. You could download music. You could chat with people.

But the Internet wasn't constantly sitting in your pocket, waiting for you to check it every 37 seconds.

Technology was a tool.

Not a lifestyle.

The physical world still existed

Want to listen to music?

Put a CD into your stereo.

Want to watch a movie?

Put a DVD into the player.

Want to take photos?

Take a camera.

Want to talk to someone?

Call them.

Want to meet someone?

Meet them.

Want to know what your friends are doing?

Ask them.

Crazy concept.

There was no digital replacement for every single physical activity.

And I think this is one of the things I miss the most.

Technology was mostly helping the analog world instead of trying to replace it.

The Internet wasn't everywhere

The Internet was somewhere you went.

You sat down at your computer.

You connected.

You did your thing.

Then you disconnected.

There was a very obvious boundary between being online and being offline.

Today that boundary basically doesn't exist.

You wake up online.

You work online.

You eat while watching something online.

You walk while listening to something online.

You go to bed while scrolling online.

And if you somehow manage to spend ten minutes doing absolutely nothing, your brain immediately asks:

What's happening?

There were forums.

There were IRC channels.

There were (kinds of) instant messengers.

You could still spend way too much time talking to random people on the Internet.

So this isn't some "back in my day people were better" bullshit.

People were still people.

The difference was that the Internet didn't have to become your entire social identity.

You could have an online nickname that nobody knew was you.

You could disappear for three months.

Nobody expected you to post an update about it.

There was no algorithm wondering whether you're interesting enough today.

Technology had friction

And friction was good.

If you wanted to take a photo, you had to have a camera with you.

If you wanted music, you had to have the music.

If you wanted to watch something, you had to find it.

If you wanted to talk to someone, you had to actually talk to them.

A little bit of friction made things intentional.

Today everything is instant.

Which sounds great.

Until everything becomes noise.

The great digital replacement

At some point we stopped asking:

How can technology make this easier?

and started asking:

How can technology replace this?

Dating?

An app.

Friends?

An app.

Shopping?

An app.

Entertainment?

An app.

Maps?

An app.

Memories?

Cloud storage.

Conversation?

Messaging.

Attention?

Infinite scrolling.

And somehow we're surprised that everything feels less real.

We keep building digital copies of things that were already working perfectly fine.

We optimized the wrong thing

The early 2000s weren't better because technology was worse.

They were better because technology knew its place.

A mobile phone helped you communicate.

A computer helped you work.

The Internet helped you find information.

A digital camera helped you take photos.

None of these things needed to become the center of your existence.

Today we optimize everything for engagement.

More notifications.

More recommendations.

The sweet spot

Maybe the sweet spot was somewhere around 2003.

Modern enough to be useful.

Primitive enough to be harmless.

You could experience the benefits of technology without constantly being exposed to it.

You could still be unreachable.

You could still be bored.

You could still get lost.

You could still have a conversation without somebody checking their phone every two minutes.

You could still own things instead of subscribing to them.

You could still have a life that wasn't automatically converted into data.

Final thoughts

Obviously, I'm romanticizing it.

The early 2000s had plenty of shitty technology.

Slow Internet.

Terrible phone cameras.

Flash websites.

Internet Explorer.

You couldn't just ask an AI to explain something to you in five seconds.

And yet…

Maybe that's the point.

We had enough technology to make life better.

But not enough to completely consume it.

That was a pretty good deal.

Best,

-- ł.