Dan Piepenbring at n+1:
SOMETIMES I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE I had the good fortune of being alive between 11:59:59 PM on December 31, 1999 and 12:00:00 AM on January 1, 2000. Of all the times to exist! It felt momentous then, when I was 13, and it still does: a state of perfect rollover, the ultimate annual flux. A global caesura, a cusp between epochs. I’ve written here before about the strange gratitude that pervaded public life in the ’90s, when it was fashionable to recognize that civilization was enjoying a moment of exceptional prosperity—a moment that happened to fall at the end of a long and gory millennium. “I think this is the most exciting time in the history of the world to be alive,” Jack Kemp said in the ’96 vice-presidential debate. Time Bomb Y2K, a new documentary composed entirely of archival footage from those heady days, finds Jeff Bezos, then in his pre-overlord era, saying the same thing: “People are gonna look back and say, ‘Wow, the late 20th century was really a great time to be alive on this planet.’”
And it did feel that way—to me, at least, as a child of the ’90s in its expansive middle class.
more here.