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I know I should probably know about the early 2000s but I was around 7 at the time of growing up. I only know tiny tid bits of information like how computers were still CRT and original GBAs. But what do you remember most about pop culture as well as technology in the early 2000s era? We don't really need to talk about politics since we all know about 9/11 probably and anything from the early years.
-HDTV is broadcasted more often, though SDTV was still the rule
-DVD replaces VHS. CDs were still relevant since cars didn't have MP3 jacks yet, but the music of the era sucked, with Teen Pop dying and being replaced by glam rap crap and crappy pop singers compared to earlier.
-Children's fads had Pokemon at the very beginning, followed by Spongebob/Yu-Gi-Oh
-These were my high school years and I graduated in 2003, but didn't care for much pop culture since I dress conservatively. I remember the iMac computers and using a cellphone for the first time.
-Reality TV expands, particularly the reality game show genre
-The Internet was much more of a wild west venture since webrings and web directories were still useful and it was special to watch a brief video clip with its long load time online. Personal pages still dominated with blogging/social media in its infancy.
In the year 2000....
I remember replacing a computer that had 5 gigs of hard-drive space with a new state of the art 20-gig hard-drive. Editing video with a computer was still not feasible.
I began collecting mp3 files instead of CDs, although the mp3 quality was only around 80-100 kbps.
High definition video was not common yet and video cameras, although smaller than in the 1990s, were still too large for pockets and only recorded onto tape.
We also started entering years with four digits instead of two.
The boy bands of the 90s were on their way out and being replaced with emo and screamo music. I was 10 in 2000. I liked Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and etc.
Reality TV became very popular. When Survivor first came on the air, it was like nothing anybody had seen.
I used a dial up modem to get onto the internet, which was nothing like it is today. It was slow. You could get knocked off the internet if too many people were trying to sign on at the same time.
We didn't have social media -- we had chat rooms. I did and said things on the internet that no preteen (we weren't "tweens," lol, that phrase wasn't really around yet) should, or would be allowed to do today. My internet time was mostly unsupervised because my parents had no idea how to navigate the web or work the computer.
People still used the phrase "world wide web."
Kids didn't have cell phones. Well, I didn't.
I'm talking more 2000-2001 here. By 2003/2004, the world/culture were getting closer to resembling what we have going on today.
I guess one thing that you could say defined those early years was the American pride everywhere. After 9/11, everyone on my block got a flag. We sang patriotic songs in school. Every goddamn thing became red white and blue and Lee Greenberg's song "God Bless the USA" was everywhere. Every day. All day.
I know I should probably know about the early 2000s but I was around 7 at the time of growing up. I only know tiny tid bits of information like how computers were still CRT and original GBAs. But what do you remember most about pop culture as well as technology in the early 2000s era? We don't really need to talk about politics since we all know about 9/11 probably and anything from the early years.
Blockbuster Video was one of the busiest places around! Now you can't find a video store.
We had a landline telephone still.
We went from dial up to broadband internet and it was like turning a light on.
Flat panel PC monitors started showing up at work but most were still CRT's.
Virtually all TV sets were the tube type. High-definition TV sets had only recently come out and were very expensive, and usually rear-projection CRT and DLP with a few uber-expensive plasma screens (though by 2003 models costing around $10,000 could be found in our local Best Buy). There was very little programming in high-definition in the U.S., and practically none in Europe or Canada.
2000 was the first time that the majority of Americans had internet access. Broadband only overtook dial-up in about 2005 (for residential connections). The broad masses accessed the internet through AOL. I first connected to broadband in 2002 and it was an amazing experience. Mobile internet was in an embryonic stage; I first used internet from a mobile phone in 2001, and it was all-text and painful, and the sites you could view were extremely limited. Cell phones were largely still based on the AMPS analog system (especially in rural areas), and digital coverage was limited. Text messaging was not yet popular and I suspect most youths sent their first text message around 2003. Accessing the internet or "messaging" friends over instant messaging services usually meant going to the room with the $1000 computer (and desk, monitor, etc.) in it and connecting to dial-up and hogging up the phone line.
The era of the smartphone did not start until the mid-to-late 2000's. However, the devices that smartphones integrate together (GPS, digital camera, MP3 player, PDA) had come out as separate components. Most of them were relegated to the high-tech / early-adopter and specialty (e.g. hunters and fishermen for GPS) crowds until the mid-2000s. Then MP3 players exploded in popularity with the iPod and most people switched to digital for their cameras. Now it seems like the average quality of a digital picture is worse than it was in 2005 or 2006, because so many people use phones for their cameras, and only a few camera phones can really match the pictures taken by a standard mid-2000s compact digital camera.
Media, except text, was still largely delivered physically. Record stores abounded, although their sales were cut into by Napster and the like as early as 2000. A legal CD with one or two good songs on it and the rest crap cost $15. If you wanted a movie, you'd get it in either VHS or DVD; legal online movies and TV shows were almost non-existent. Pirated copies were beginning to appear on filesharing websites, but it was not until the mid-2000s that the average American had a connection fast enough to download them.
A number of innovative, (somewhat) inexpensive or free devices that were far ahead of their time and thus failures were released in that period. The 2000 Radio Shack catalog included a little barcode scanner and barcodes for items that, when scanned in, would direct one to the product's web page. And there was the Cybiko: Cybiko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and similar devices, but they never went beyond "toy" status.
MP3 format became ubiquitous around 2000. I clearly remember college buddies having huge Napster libraries and never paying a dime for any of it. But it was relegated to your laptop or PC at the time. There was no such thing as an iPod/iPhone/android device to take it with you in the car or on the go. I remember burning MP3 files to CD-R as late as 2005-06 so I could go blast them in the car.
SMS Text messaging started to come alive as a common communication format around 2002-03, but didn't truly become ubiquitous until more people were on the Qwerty keyboard/smartphone bandwagon, whenever that happened. Texting sucked on a standard phone keypad. Text messaging didn't even exist in 2000 as far as i know. It certainly wasn't part of the standard lexicon if it did.
Wireless Internet (wifi) is something hardly anybody knew about or used back in 2000. I can't recall a single reference to wireless Internet in my pre-2000 high school years, but I do clearly remember it being common and available on my college campus in 2003-04, so somewhere within that timeframe it became a "thing". I don't recall ever wirelessly surfing the web personally until at least 2005'ish when I accidentally bummed a connection off of a neighbor. The idea that the Internet could fly through the air was some kind of sorcery in my mind.
It seemed like America never really entered the 21st century after 9/11 until the end of the Bush administration. Sure, technology advanced some, but the music, entertainment and the general culture hardly changed it seemed to me.
Part of that may be due to my age; I was in my late 50's then, and the Iraq war continually reminded me of the similarities it had to Viet Nam, the war of my youth. Another factor may have been returning to a job I had first held in 1990. But even after I left the job in 2003, it seemed nothing really changed until some time late in 2007.
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