The Internet - The internet had a technical bar of entry for idiots. Basically, your average social media influencer couldn't manage to connect a Windows 3.11 486 to the internet. It's not like now: you buy a internet access package, Spectrum/Charter/Comcast ships it to you, you follow the "easy connect" instructions, and boom, you'll be online. Back then, you had to buy a modem - on your own - from a brick and mortar computer store. And you had to know the difference between the ISA, PCI, MicroChannel (IBM PS/2), or VESA Local Bus (486/Pentium), and/or the difference between a expansion slot type modem (the previous I was talking about), and a external modem (which connected to the Serial Port on your computer - which looks like an Atari Joystick connector to most people at the time if they even notice the appearance). Then you had to install the modem INSIDE the computer, or connect it to a serial port, an electrical outlet, and then the phone line, and then pass your Telephone through it. This wasn't just a simple Plug n' play thing either...

If you had an internal modem, you had to go to DOS, type in MSD, and look at what IRQ and Memory Address your serial ports were at, and configure the card, using little plastic bits called "Jumpers" NOT to one of those settings. If you had an external modem, you had to figure out WHICH "COM PORT" the modem was on (serial port), and then point your "dialer" to that COM Port.

Oh, but you're not done yet. You need to setup the software. AOL, CompuServe, Knowlogy, or the bazillion local Dial-Up ISPs. So you called them up, got a Diskette, or had to get a diskette with the dialer on it somehow, or get a friend who already has an internet connection to download it for you, bring it to your computer, install it, configure it to your modem, and then there's the "local area access number" problem. AOL was easy, you just dialed into their central server and you got some. But with some others, you had to CALL - on the Telephone - and get the numbers from the ISP Direct.

Once you had all THAT configured, then you needed a Web Browser. Hopefully your Modem came with a CD that has one. And your choices were Mosaic (precursor to Mozilla Firefox), Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.x, or Netscape Navigator. There were no "tabs", there were no "bookmark toolbars". You were stuck on a 486 with 4MB of RAM - so no more than a couple browser windows at a time, and we made it work. No streaming audio, no YouTube - it was all READING! And pictures took FIVE MINUTES to load. Yeah. I'd love to see some of these brats these days get online and try that stuff. Oh, and since ISPs were generally not huge corporations, if someone was being a real asshole on the internet, all you had to do was report them to their ISP, and they might lose their account. Crazy, once upon a time, the internet service providers had ACCOUNTABILITY. Now it's turned into a literal damn free-for-all where the OnlyFans Harlot can get away with showing as much as she can get away with, while some guy gets fully kicked off a social media platform because he disagrees with a political cult! You wanna' call this "progress". Leave the computing to NERDS - not these fake modern day ones, but REAL NERDS. The ones that understand what a Spanning Tree Algorithm is.

Cars - Back in 1994, you could buy a fully loaded Ford Explorer for $18.999, in 2025, it costs almost as much as a base model Mercedes for a BASE MODEL. There are absolutley no compact pickup trucks anymore. Back then, you could pick your poison: Dodge Dakota, Ford Ranger, Chevy S-10, GMC Jimmy, Toyota (not even a model name in the states), the Nissan 720 Hardbody or Frontier...and Honda didn't even make trucks back then. No cheap compact cars anymore either. A Toyota Corolla today is bigger than a mid-size Sedan from that time - something like the Ford Tempo or Ford Taurus. Jeezuz, a Camry now is almost as big as a Lincoln Town Car from 1985 - my Grandpa had one of those. And there's all these "Dumb" bells and whistles. I have a 93 Explorer, it has power windows, power locks, a full gauge cluster with a tach, a roof rack, and A/C - in 2025 that same bloody truck would have 4 doors, traction control, proximity sensors, inertia sensor, auto-braking, drive assist of various forms...and then a giant 9" screen in the middle so we can be even more distracted while we go somewhere, on-board WiFi that requires paying for yet ANOTHER internet connection,