The 90s Technology Sufficiency

​I just saw a video of a house in the 90s and its surroundings — the cycles kept outside, the television, the Walkman, and the computer, and I felt like technology could have stopped right there. There did not have to be much more evolution, and I am not saying this from the perspective of wanting peace of mind or anything. I was also reading this thing where it said we were trying to reduce the use of paper to save trees, but then we advanced and ended up cutting even more trees. So I feel like going digital has also impacted the environment even more.

The kind of technology that existed in the 90s, I feel, could have been sufficient. Of course, today it is much safer, you know, with so much interconnectedness in the world. With all the CCTV and everything, we get to know what happened in a house, people are able to get more justice. People are able to change their minds and evolve because you are seeing that you have eyes on you, or you are seeing how different people think. Globalisation and all that is fine, but I just feel like the technology of everyday life could have stopped right there.

We could have listened to music on a Walkman. We could have gone to stores to get CDs, and it would have served the same purpose. We could have had basic computers and managed to work faster, manage things, and play games too. We did not need a telephone in every hand. Of course, that again has made us safer, but I don’t know. I don’t know where we could have drawn the line, but there was so much calmness back then as well, and I think that is not because of our inability to stay offline now. It also has to do with the lesser amount of information entering our brains.

Right now, there is so much information from everywhere. We know what’s happening everywhere in the world, with everybody, in every aspect. So much information. And I keep thinking: how much is the brain processing, and how much is it able to remember? I don’t know. Maybe it’s affecting us more than we realise because the more information you have, I feel like our brains are also like hard drives with a certain capacity, right? So I’m sure things are falling out with so much information, and I’m not sure how much we can control what to keep and what to keep out.

So that is also why we don’t have peace. It’s not that there is comparison or there are mental health issues or whatever. I think it’s because there is just too much information coming at us from everywhere. Also, I’m sure Wi-Fi and radiation, of course, must be disturbing us and making it even more difficult to be calm.

It felt so peaceful in the video that I saw of a 90s house and its neighbourhood. Just looking at it gave me peace. So I really wonder what it was back then, and I think it was mostly just technology being enough to make our lives easier, but also not enough that we lost the luxury of choosing when to receive information.