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Comment by dtech | Hacker News Reader

for the west, I feel like the pre- and post-9/11 world also was very different

I've not lived in the west, so I could be wrong. My take as a teenager in the 90s is that the world changed post internet. The second half of the 90s is when the web became mainstream (in the west).

9/11 caused untold suffering and divided the world, but the internet was the line between the 80's world and the present.

my mental model puts the years 2000 to 2019 basically as a single decade. With Corona and maybe accelerating climate desasters I don't think this will happen for the decade 2020 to 2039. But that's just me.

9/11 has had -- and continiue to have -- far-reaching consequences that have an impact many people's lives. It pales in comparison to the impact that constant internet access and mobile computing have had, though.

I watched some 9/11 live news broadcasts with my kids last year, because they knew of it but wanted to understand what it was like at the time. Even the clothes and hair styles of the presenters look very 80s to me.

I think cultural cycles really go roughly in double-decades. The early 60s look just like the 50s. The late 60s and 70s merge into each other. The 80s and 90s were another phase that petered out in the early 2000s. We're now in the post-2000 millennial era, so maybe another cultural phase is coming along soon.

Teens here wear jeans with holes in them. This was a trend during the punk and trash metal haydays, but I doubt the current trend is in any other way related to the punk or metal subculture. Lifestyle trends get rehashed.

With luck shoulder pads and big hair won't come back until long after I'm gone.

In what regards? Asking as someone living in Europe.

(We had lots of terrorism way before 9/11.)

My initial reaction was similar, but to be fair (commercial) air travel is pretty different globally post vs ante.

It wasn't so much the terrorist act that had long consequences, but the governments' reactions to the act. The USA PATRIOT Act is probably the largest. The 20 year war machine is another. A full 20-25% of the US population under 20 has never lived in a time before our current involvement in Afghanistan. There are families where both parents and children have fought in that war. Note that both parties support this with their constant renewal. It was supposed to expire in 2005.

Then there was the torture and Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp, which is still open and housing prisoners. "We tortured some folks." War in Iraq (totally unrelated BTW), Abu Ghraib, countless civilian casualties, mass surveillance, militarization of police, it's really some horrific shit that came out of 9/11. News media lost a lot (all?) of their credibility during all this as well. For people coming of age after, all this is normal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...

You mean for the US maybe. In Europe I don't think people cared that much.

It might not have had the psychological impact that it did in the US, but the world became a drastically different place afterwards with the "war" on terrorism.

In my mind there was weird post Soviet innocence in the 90s where the West felt invincible and many believe Western style democracy would take over the world within decades. 9/11 was a rude awakening, and we have been living in its shadow for the last 20 years.

>In my mind there was weird post Soviet innocence in the 90s where the West felt invincible and many believe Western style democracy would take over the world within decades.

This viewpoint was well described (and I think influenced) by Fukuyama's book "The End of History and the Last Man"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...

People not, the press however is very happy to comemorate such events.

People here in Europe cared a lot. Not really for the terrorist attacks, except in an 'it happens over there too now' kind of sense.

No, general reaction was: The biggest military/nuclear power in the world is going to be very pissed, lets hope the results don't end up here.

And it did end up here. The US lost all moral high ground. All kinds of nasty military and spy industries smelled an opening, making the world a worse place.

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