Why is it that reading news from 2 decades ago feels productive?

As I've been studying news from the last decades I can see certain categories unfolding. Tech that is available now and was predicted pretty precisely — eg. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/11/magazine/tech-2010-24-all...

Ideas that took a lot more time to get implemented — https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/11/magazine/tech-2010-14-fee...

And, essays with ideas that seem even more relevant today — https://web.archive.org/web/20000815060013/http://www.beyond...