Nah, '95 was best. BBS systems were in their final bloom, Usenet was better than everything that came afterwards (OK, the fediverse maaaay be a good successor) and there were still the COOL systems (Atari, Commodore…) around even after their respective companies had abandoned them.
You also could make some decent money if you had some rudimentary coding skills… I financed my first motorcycle (for which I hadn’t a driving license, mind you) by writing a (QBASIC? Visual Basic? I don’t remember) software for managing car parts for some local used car dealers.
In between the Matrix in 1999 and 2011 you have 9-11, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the 2008 financial crash. And that’s just the big US-centric stuff.
Peak was 2011 change my mind.
Nah, '95 was best. BBS systems were in their final bloom, Usenet was better than everything that came afterwards (OK, the fediverse maaaay be a good successor) and there were still the COOL systems (Atari, Commodore…) around even after their respective companies had abandoned them.
You also could make some decent money if you had some rudimentary coding skills… I financed my first motorcycle (for which I hadn’t a driving license, mind you) by writing a (QBASIC? Visual Basic? I don’t remember) software for managing car parts for some local used car dealers.
In between the Matrix in 1999 and 2011 you have 9-11, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the 2008 financial crash. And that’s just the big US-centric stuff.
Well, my first kiss was around 2011 so that kinda evens everything out
Fair