I'm 40 and was in university when the first iPhone went out. The "glory days" of internet started soon, and I've never felt I lived through an exciting era (or job market) back then. I was living in Europe, far from the SV, and we were quickly hit by the subprime crisis consequences and the Greek public debt one, so in fact we were actually quite worried by everything, especially our early career prospects.
This hasn't changed much today, and I try to remind this period of my life when I catch myself thinking I wish I'd live through the AI revolution as a 20 something full of grit. Most of us realise we are experiencing glory days once they're gone (or about to end), so don't be too frustrated, and it's probably normal to be afraid of the future, we're surrounded by bad news and people preaching our great demise; it was already the case circa 2010.
That's funny. To me (mid-40s), the "glory days" of the internet were pre-iPhone, around 1997-2005 or so. Sure, speeds were lower, but that was ok for the time. And sure, everyone didn't have always-on internet access wherever they were, but I think that was mostly a good thing.
I expect if we were to ask a 50 or 60 year old when the internet's glory days were, they'd go even farther back in time.
Indeed. Early to mid 1990's, that's where it was at. FTP, telnet, gopher were awesome, and then, in short order: HTML, Mosaic, Netscape - the WWW. Really useful.
Then AOL etc. offered cheap dial-up, and suddenly you had all those noobs online ("Eternal September"). Been going downhill since then ;-)
This hasn't changed much today, and I try to remind this period of my life when I catch myself thinking I wish I'd live through the AI revolution as a 20 something full of grit. Most of us realise we are experiencing glory days once they're gone (or about to end), so don't be too frustrated, and it's probably normal to be afraid of the future, we're surrounded by bad news and people preaching our great demise; it was already the case circa 2010.