I asked some friends the other day what they miss most about the 90s. These were some of the gem responses I received: cassette tapes, CDs, renting DVDs, pay phones, smoking in public, safety, roller skating with friends, no mobile phones and no social media. No social media? Imagine that. It seems crazy to think, but if it weren’t for the 90s, so many things wouldn’t be doable today. Like browsing Bored Panda. Or finding cool stuff on Facebook. Talking of which… There’s actually a Facebook page called 90s Flashback that’s dedicated solely to whipping up nostalgic memories from that era. We’ve compiled a list of our favorites. What a whirlwind it’s been since then. It’s now possible to ask the Big G pretty much anything… I decided to start with “what were the best inventions from the 90s?” and here’s what I discovered. According to the World Wide Web Foundation, “By October of 1990, Tim had written the three fundamental technologies that remain the foundation of today’s web (and which you may have seen appear on parts of your web browser).” Those are HTML, URI and HTTP. By the end of that year, the first web page was launched and in 1991, the web was opened to the public. Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 “for services to the global development of the Internet”. And Bored Panda was launched in 2009. All we can say is, “thank you, Sir!” But it wasn’t long before IBM released “Simon”, the world’s first touch screen mobile device. And in 1997, Nokia unveiled the 9000i Communicator, its first full keyboard phone. If you were around in those days you might remember the massive, bulky bricks that could do a fair bit of damage if dropped on your toe. Since then, we’ve seen phones in all shapes, colors and sizes. See here for some of the strangest phones ever made. And a shoutout to Blackberry, who released their first phone in 1999 and went on to dominate the market for most of the 2000s before iPhones entered the game. The world’s first DVD player released in 1996. And the video stores had to quickly also start stocking movies on discs. By 2003, some retailers had stopped selling VHS tapes altogether. Needless to say, the kids of today will never know the struggles we had before streaming became a thing. Here’s a fun 90s movie quiz to take you on a trip down memory lane. And as ThoughtCo. reported, “The original PlayStation was designed as a multi-media and multi-purpose entertainment unit. Besides being able to play Super Nintendo games, the PlayStation could play audio CDs and could read CDs with computer and video information.” Fast forward to today and Sony says it has 97 million monthly active Playstation users. Or if you’d rather trip back in time, into your local video store after calling them using an old fashioned dialing telephone. What were your favorite memories of the 1990s and what don’t you miss? Let us know in the comments. Follow Bored Panda on Google News! Follow us on Flipboard.com/@boredpanda! Please use high-res photos without watermarks Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
