Prompted by all the commencements making the news.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Pre-2006:

    • End of the Cold War and the USSR
    • 9/11, the war on terror, invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan
    • Cell phones, laptops, public GPS, WiFI
    • The internet, Wikipedia, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit
    • Public awareness of global warming

    Post-2006:

    • 2008 financial crisis
    • Smart phones
    • TikTok, Instagram, Netflix
    • Covid-19
    • LLMs, generative AI

    I’m sure I’m overlooking some things, but the pre-2006 decades seem like a more drastic change overall.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 month ago

      All of the pairs of decades going back to 1906 have been a bigger swing than than 06-26. This century seems on track to be a bit more like the 19th, in terms of social change.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 month ago

        Eh. We have forest fire smoke season where I live now, as well as more extreme or hot weather, but it’s a pretty subtle shift compared to the internet appearing. At least so far.

    • DudeImMacGyver@kbin.earth
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      1 month ago

      Smartphones were 100% around before 2006, FYI Even some of the “dumb” phones (like the OG Razr) could browse the web, take pictures/video, watch TV, etc. They were just becoming increasingly commonplace as the costs went down.

      On a related note, Apple did not invent the smartphone. They just happened to become the first really popular one, thanks mostly to marketing, because the OG iPhone was garbage (it couldn’t even copy and paste) especially compared to Android and WebOS (or even Windows, BlackberryOS, or Garnett - which didn’t look pretty but were more capable than iOS at the time).

      It only got good after it stole a ton of features and designs from Android and WebOS (which was a wildly underrated mobile OS that is more or less, what all modern smartphone homescreen interfaces are based on, in fact Android hired the guy who made WebOS’s UI to fix up Android’s interface, which Apple largely copied). Unfortunately for WebOS, it was horribly mismanaged and a real mess on the back end because of said mismanagement, making it a pain in the ass to develop for (meaning, there weren’t many apps).

    • everett@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      The tech stuff on your pre-2006 list brings to mind the phrase “The future is here, but it’s not evenly distributed yet.”

      Those things technically existed, a few of them were in their infancy, but for the most part they hadn’t reshaped society yet.

    • joelle_ether@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      1986 to 2006 is a massive leap as far as LGBTQIA+ rights an even as far as recognizing some of those letters as actual things not to mention the whole spectrum, awareness, representation, those things have largely improved. I know it’s a bit hard to reckon with now we seem to be on a backslide but trust we’ll make it