I still have my old Nokia 3210 in a drawer somewhere. The battery probably still works. That phone survived being dropped more times than I can count, got soaked in the rain, and even went through a washing machine once. It just kept working.
Compare that to my current smartphone, which needs a case, screen protector, and the gentlest of handling. We’ve gained so much in terms of features and capabilities, but we lost something too. That indestructible simplicity. That feeling of pure excitement when you got a new gadget that did just one thing really, really well.
The 1990s were special. We were caught between two worlds. The analog past was fading away while the digital future was just beginning to take shape. We had one foot in each, experiencing both the last gasp of old technology and the first breath of what would become our modern connected world.
Things started to look like the world we live in today in the 1990s. People used cell phones and had computers in their homes. The decade brought us innovations that we now take completely for granted. Let me take you back to that weird, wonderful time when technology was transforming from science fiction into everyday reality.
The Internet Arrives (But Slowly)
If you’re under 25, you probably can’t imagine life before you could instantly Google anything. But in the early 90s, most people had never even heard of the internet.
The internet as we know it today didn’t take shape until 1989 when Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web and launched his first client in 1990. This British computer scientist working at CERN in Switzerland created something that would change absolutely everything. The advent of the internet in the 90s revolutionized how we communicate and access information.
But here’s what most people forget. Having the World Wide Web was one thing. Actually connecting to it? That was a whole different challenge.
Dial Up: The Sound That Defined a Decade
In July 1992, Sprint became the first company to offer dial up internet commercially, and thus, the internet was introduced to the public at large. But using it required something that today sounds completely unusual.
Picture this: You want to check your email. First, you have to make sure nobody in your house needs to use the telephone. Then you sit at your computer and literally dial a phone number. Your modem makes this horrible screeching noise for about 30 to 45 seconds. If you’re lucky and nobody picks up the phone, you get connected.
The distinctive screech of a dial up modem became a hallmark of the 90s internet experience. That sound is burned into the memory of anyone who lived through it. We joke about it now, but back then, that screeching was the sound of the future arriving.
Dial up internet speed in the 90s was nothing to write home about. Typically, the speed ranged from 28.8 Kbps to 56 Kbps. To put that in perspective, today’s average broadband speed is 100 Mbps. Downloading a 3MB song could take 15 to 20 minutes. Sometimes longer.
And if someone in your house picked up the phone while you were online? Instant disconnection. Your download would stop. Your chat would end. Everything would just vanish. You’d have to start all over again.
Despite these limitations, dial up was a gateway to the digital world, allowing users to explore new horizons. By 2000, 43% of the U.S. population would be connected to the internet. The genie was out of the bottle, and there was no going back.
AOL: You’ve Got Mail
At its peak in 2000, AOL had 23.2 million dial up subscribers. If you were online in the 90s, you probably used AOL at some point. Those free trial CDs seemed to be everywhere. You got them in the mail, at grocery stores, in magazines. AOL was giving them away by the millions.
The company made the announcement on its website recently that it’s finally discontinuing dial up service in September 2025. That’s right. People were still using AOL dial up in 2025. About 977,000 people as of 2017 were still connecting to the internet the old fashioned way.
AOL made the internet accessible to regular people who weren’t computer experts. The interface was simple. Chat rooms let people with shared interests connect from across the world. Email became something your parents could actually use. And that “You’ve Got Mail” greeting? It became part of pop culture. They even made a movie about it in 1998.
The First Web Browsers
The first web browser was revealed in 1990 and was originally called WorldWideWeb. Later, the name changed to Nexus to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web itself.
But the browser that really made the internet take off was Netscape Navigator. A team of former students at the University of Illinois created the Mosaic web browser in 1993. Marc Andreessen led that team, and they left the research facility to start Netscape. By the mid 1990s, Netscape had about 80% of the browser market in the US and Europe.
Then Microsoft launched Internet Explorer with Windows 95, and the browser wars began. Competition drove rapid innovation. Websites got more sophisticated. The web went from boring text pages to something colorful, interactive, and genuinely useful.
The Websites That Changed Everything
Some of the world’s biggest websites first went online in the 90s. Amazon launched in 1995 as an online bookstore. Google launched in 1998, starting as a research project by two PhD students at Stanford. eBay, IMDb, and Yahoo all got their start in this decade.
These weren’t just websites. They were the foundations of the digital economy we live in today. They proved that you could build real businesses online. That e-commerce could work. That people would trust the internet with their money and personal information.
The Cell Phone Revolution
Mobile phones existed before the 90s, but they were enormous, expensive, and rare. The 1990s turned them into something the general public could actually own and use.
Nokia: Indestructible and Iconic
In 1992, Nokia released the 1011, which was the first mass market GSM phone. In 1994, the 2010 and 2110 took its place in the market. Nokia went on to produce some of the most popular cell phones in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The Nokia 3210 might be the most iconic phone of the entire decade. Released in 1999, it was simple, affordable, and practically indestructible. It also introduced the world to Snake, arguably the first truly viral mobile game. Everyone had played Snake. Everyone had spent hours trying to beat their high score.
These phones were built like tanks. You could drop them from incredible heights and they’d be fine. The battery lasted for days. They just worked. No apps. No touchscreens. And no complexity. Just phone calls and text messages. And somehow, that was enough.
Text Messages: A Communication Revolution
Back in 1992, Neil Papworth, a developer at Sema Group Telecoms, successfully sent the world’s first text message to Richard Jarvis, a director at Vodafone, who received it on his Nokia 1011. Mobile phones didn’t come with keyboards back then, so he sent the message using his PC. And what did the message say? “Merry Christmas.”
Nobody knew it at the time, but text messaging would become one of the most important forms of communication in human history. Texting changed everything. You didn’t have to call someone and interrupt whatever they were doing. You could send a quick message and they’d respond when they had time.
By the late 90s, teenagers were texting constantly. A whole new language emerged with abbreviations like LOL, BRB, and OMG. Parents complained they couldn’t understand what their kids were saying anymore. The digital divide between generations was forming.
Gaming: From Cartridges to Discs
The 90s completely transformed video gaming. Console gaming went from being mostly for kids to something adults loved too.
The PlayStation Changes Everything
The first PlayStation video game console exploded onto the tech scene in 1994, having been launched by Sony Computer Entertainment. Part of a new generation of 32 bit consoles, the PlayStation used compact discs instead of cartridges, which hadn’t been seen before.
This was a bigger deal than most people realize. CDs could hold way more data than cartridges. Games could have full motion video, actual voice acting, and complex soundtracks. Graphics got dramatically better. Game worlds became larger and more detailed.
The PlayStation was first released in Japan in December 1994 before making its debut in America in September 1995. Both releases attracted impressive sales. It sold over 100 million units, proving there was a massive market for adult oriented gaming.
Games like Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, and Resident Evil pushed boundaries. They told complex stories. They created emotional experiences. And they proved video games could be art.
Nintendo 64: Cartridges Make a Final Stand
Nintendo decided to stick with cartridges for their next console. The N64 got its name from the 64 bit CPU it used and was Nintendo’s last home console to require cartridges. It launched in 1996 and was deemed the most powerful console of its generation.
The Nintendo 64 had legendary games. Super Mario 64 showed what 3D gaming could be. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is still considered one of the greatest games ever made. And GoldenEye 007? That game defined multiplayer gaming on consoles.
What gamer doesn’t have awesome memories of this console? Four controller ports meant easy multiplayer. No need for a special adapter. Just plug in four controllers and you were ready for intense Mario Kart battles or GoldenEye deathmatches.
Some of the best video games of all time were first released for Nintendo 64. The console taught many just how disruptive dust can be to technology. If a game wasn’t working, simply blowing on the cartridge would often do the trick. Did it actually help? Probably not. But we all believed it did, and that’s what mattered.
Game Boy: Portable Gaming Dominates
Okay, so technically the Game Boy was released in 1989, but it surged in popularity during the 1990s and it’s probably the most iconic gaming gadget of that era. It brought handheld gaming into the mainstream.
The Game Boy was released at the very end of the 80s, surging into mass popularity in the early 90s. It reigned supreme for quite a while, even having a hold on gamers into the 2000s. Tetris came bundled with it and became instantly addictive. Later, Pokémon turned the Game Boy into an absolute phenomenon.
Pokémon Red and Blue launched in 1998 in North America and created absolute madness. Kids everywhere were catching, training, and battling Pokémon. The games sold millions of copies. The trading card game launched. An animated series became a hit. Pokémon was suddenly everywhere, and it all started on the humble Game Boy.
Personal Digital Assistants: The Smartphone’s Ancestors
Before smartphones combined everything into one device, we had PDAs. Personal Digital Assistants were pocket sized computers that managed your schedule, contacts, and notes.
PDAs become popular in the mid 1990s with the release of the touchscreen Apple Newton in 1993, although it has a monochrome screen. The Newton was ahead of its time. It featured handwriting recognition that…well, let’s just say it didn’t work very well. People loved to make fun of how badly it misread handwriting. There were even Simpsons jokes about it.
But the Newton introduced ideas that would inspire future Apple devices. Touchscreens. Mobile computing. Digital note taking. These concepts would eventually lead to the iPhone, but in 1993, the technology just wasn’t ready yet.
The device that actually succeeded was the Palm Pilot. The first one was introduced in 1996. They were commonly referred to as PDAs, or personal digital assistants. One could argue that this was the earliest version of today’s digital assistants, like Siri or Alexa.
If the busiest person in your life didn’t have a Palm Pilot, the busiest character in your favorite movie did. Businesspeople loved them. They replaced bulky paper planners. You could sync them with your computer. They became status symbols. Having a Palm Pilot meant you were important and organized.
Later in the late 1990s, the first full color PDAs are released, but they consume a lot of battery life. These would gradually merge their features with mobile phones, leading to smartphones such as the iPhone. But that wouldn’t happen until the next decade.
DVDs: The Death of VHS
In 1996, the world said goodbye to VHS and embraced a new technology for watching videos: DVDs. The replacement for VHS, DVD (short for digital video disc) was developed in 1995 and released in 1996.
DVDs were revolutionary. Better picture quality. Better sound. They didn’t wear out from repeated use like tapes did. You could skip directly to any scene instead of fast forwarding and rewinding. They had special features, deleted scenes, and commentary tracks. Movies became more than just movies.
The world’s first DVD player, the Toshiba SD 3000, instantly became popular. No single company or person can be credited for the invention of DVD. Several tech companies created variations and each came to an agreement on one format, thus avoiding a repeat of VHS and Betamax competition.
DVDs become available in Japan in 1995 and the US in 1997, making video cassettes obsolete by the early 2000s. Video rental stores like Blockbuster transitioned from endless shelves of VHS tapes to walls of shiny DVDs. Eventually, even those DVD rental stores would disappear, replaced by streaming. But in the late 90s, DVDs felt like the future.
Portable Music: The Soundtrack of the 90s
Several formats of portable music player were popular during the 1990s. These included portable cassette players (most notably Sony’s Walkman), portable CD players (also popular was Sony’s Discman), MiniDisc players, and MP3 players. Your device of choice likely depended on the size of your wallet or your parent’s bank account, but they were all awesome in their own ways.
The Discman: CDs on the Go
The Discman allowed you to take your CDs on the go. Owning one meant you could listen to your favorite album wherever you went, as long as you didn’t bump it too hard and make it skip.
This was both the best and worst thing about portable CD players. The music sounded great when everything worked. But if you were walking and the player bounced around? Skip. If you were on a bus that went over a bump? Skip. If you breathed too hard? Okay, not really, but it felt like it sometimes.
Anti skip protection became a major selling point. Players with better shock absorption could handle more movement. But even the best ones would skip eventually if you weren’t careful. It was just part of the experience.
The MiniDisc: The Format That Almost Made It
So many technological advances come down to simply making things smaller. You didn’t want to listen to your music on a regular sized CD anymore? The 90s had you covered, thanks to the MiniDisc.
MiniDiscs were smaller than CDs, and you could record on them. They seemed like the perfect middle ground between CDs and cassettes. Sony pushed them hard. Audiophiles loved them. But they never quite caught on with mainstream audiences.
The problem? CDs were already established. And soon, MP3 players would make both formats obsolete. The MiniDisc was a brilliant technology that arrived at exactly the wrong time.
Early MP3 Players: The Future Emerges
MP3s seem silly and outdated now, but it’s important to remember that many pieces of technology are important in the domino effect of progress. If we never had the MP3 player, who knows when we would have had music on our phones?
The first portable MP3 players appeared in the late 90s. They were clunky and expensive, with limited storage. But they represented something revolutionary. Digital music files that could be copied, shared, and stored without any physical media.
The music industry hated this. Services like Napster launched in 1999, letting people share music files freely. The recording industry called it piracy and went to war. But the cat was out of the bag. Digital music was the future, whether the record labels liked it or not.
The Gadgets We Loved
The 90s gave us so many weird, wonderful devices that make us smile with nostalgia today.
Tamagotchi: The Digital Pet Craze
The Tamagotchi, the original virtual pet, is a childhood staple of the 1990s. These little digital toys were created by Bandai in the mid 1990s. They soon took off in popularity around the world.
All you had to do was look after the digital creature, feed it, nurture it, and ensure it didn’t die. How many of us were obsessed with these games back in those days? The digital pet on a keychain was a global obsession at the time.
And the guilt when your Tamagotchi died? Real. It didn’t matter that it was just pixels on a tiny screen. You felt like you’d failed your pet. Schools banned them because kids were checking on their Tamagotchis during class. Parents got frustrated when their kids woke up at night to feed them. It was madness.
In 1996, the Tyco toy company asked to use similar technology to create a doll with the character of Elmo from Sesame Street. Tickle Me Elmo became one of the most popular children’s toys and was named the most desired toy of the 1996 Christmas shopping season.
Pagers: Before Everyone Had Cell Phones
Also known as beepers, pagers had been in use in the 50s but only to a niche group: doctors. Fast forward a few decades and the beeper became widely used by people from all walks of life.
Beepers weren’t first invented in the 90s, and Motorola had been making them long prior. But that decade brought about a renewed love for the technology, probably because Motorola released them in fun colors. A fun color can make anything more appealing.
Users could choose to get a one way pager that could only receive messages or a two way pager that could both create and view messages. If you were important (or wanted to seem important), you had a pager clipped to your belt.
Doctors had them. Drug dealers had them. Business executives had them. Teenagers begged their parents for them. The pager represented being reachable, being needed, being part of something bigger.
Floppy Disks and Zip Drives
These discs enabled users to transfer information from computer to computer, albeit not huge amounts of information at one time as floppy discs did not contain much memory. A standard floppy disk held 1.44 MB of data. That’s not even enough for a single photo by today’s standards.
For those who needed heavy duty memory, another 90s icon, Zip drives, did the trick. Zip disks could hold 100 MB or even 250 MB. That seemed like unlimited storage at the time.
Programs came on floppy disks. You’d install software by feeding disk after disk into your computer. “Please insert disk 7 of 12” was a message we all saw too often. And if one disk was corrupted? You were out of luck.
These colorful, small discs are obsolete now. CD writing technology and eventually thumb drives made them unnecessary. Nowadays you can even install Windows 10 from a USB flash drive, a far cry from the floppy disc age.
The Talkboy: When a Movie Prop Became Real
Created to use in the movie Home Alone 2, the success of the film resulted in the Talkboy becoming a real product for sale. The Talkboy was a cassette recorder that kids, or anyone, could record whatever noise and talking they wanted and play it back.
Its widespread popularity culminated in the Talkboy becoming one of the most sought after toys of the 90s. Weirdly, there was a later version called the Talkgirl with the only difference being it was pink.
Kids loved these things. You could record your voice, play it back, and even change the speed to make yourself sound funny. It seemed magical. In reality, it was just a cassette recorder, but the marketing made it feel special.
Software That Changed Computing
Windows 95: The Operating System That Won
Microsoft introduces Windows 95, which gains immediate popularity and makes Windows the standard operating system for most PCs. Windows 98 is even more successful three years later.
Windows 95 was a game changer in the world of personal computing. Launched amidst excitement and anticipation, it introduced a host of features that altered the way users interacted with their PCs.
The introduction of the Start button and menu revolutionized the desktop interface, providing a single point of access for applications, settings, and system functions. This ease of navigation, combined with features like the taskbar for managing running applications, marked a significant leap forward.
From September 2, 1990 to December 31, 1999, Microsoft’s share price increased by nearly 100 times. In 1999, Microsoft was the largest company in the world, boasting a market value of $614 billion. Windows 95 was a huge part of that success.
Photoshop: When Photos Stopped Being Real
Let’s face it, nothing in advertising and photography was the same after Photoshop. It was released in 1990 and grew into quite possibly the most important photo editing tool of all time.
Fascinated by technology and art, brothers Thomas and John Knoll noticed the lack of photo editing features on computers and decided to code some of their own. What started as a personal project became an industry standard.
Back then, it was a tool used primarily by professional photographers. Today, it’s available to anyone with a PC and has inspired many of the filters and features on the most popular smartphone photo apps. Photoshop creates images that are so convincing and realistic, it forced us to try to determine what’s real and what isn’t.
Magazine covers became impossible beauty standards. Product photos stopped representing what you’d actually receive. Even news photos could be manipulated. Photoshop changed our relationship with images forever.
Linux: The Free Alternative
Forget iOS and Android. Were you using Linux when it first debuted? In 1991, development of the free Linux kernel is started by Linus Torvalds in Finland.
Linus Torvalds, the man who invented Linux, is a software pioneer who’s partially responsible for everyone’s ability to use Google and Amazon. Linux proved that you could create powerful software collaboratively, with volunteers from around the world contributing code for free.
Today, Linux runs on most of the world’s servers. It powers Android phones. It’s in smart TVs, routers, and countless other devices. But in the 90s, it was this weird thing that only computer nerds used. How things change.
Java: Write Once, Run Anywhere
In 1995, the Java programming language is developed by Sun Microsystems. The promise of Java was revolutionary. Write your code once and it could run on any computer, regardless of the operating system.
Java became hugely important for web applications and later for Android development. It’s still widely used today, though it has its critics. But in the 90s, it represented the dream of truly universal software.
What the 90s Taught Us
The 1990s were filled with gadgets that felt groundbreaking at the time, even if some seem clunky today. These devices not only shaped how we played, communicated, and created, but also paved the way for the connected world we live in now.
Looking back, what strikes me most is how excited we were about everything. Every new gadget felt like magic. Every internet connection, slow as it was, felt like touching the future. We didn’t take any of it for granted because we remembered what life was like before.
Some technologies invented and improved during the 1990s created the foundation for everything we use today. The World Wide Web and its HTTP protocol. Mobile phones that common people could afford. Digital photography. E commerce. Search engines. These weren’t just inventions. They were the building blocks of modern life.
By 1996, 64 percent of K through 12 schools in the United States had internet access and 63 percent of American 12th graders reported using a computer for school work. A generation was growing up digital, though we didn’t fully understand what that would mean yet.
The decade ended with the Y2K panic. Everyone worried that computers would crash when the calendar rolled over to 2000. We spent billions preparing for potential disaster. And when midnight struck and nothing happened? We breathed a sigh of relief and kept moving forward into the digital age.
The Legacy We’re Living
So much technology invented in the 1990s was critical to the advancement of technological innovation that got us to where we are today. Smartphones, the digital camera, targeted internet searches, and the World Wide Web itself, emojis, even Snapchat and Instagram are all built on the ideas that came about in the 1990s.
The 90s were a transition decade. We went from a world where computers were optional to one where they became essential. From a world where you had to be at a specific place to make a phone call to one where anyone could reach you anywhere. From a world where information was scarce to one where it became overwhelming.
We lived through that transformation. We adapted to changes that seemed impossible just years before. And honestly? Most of us didn’t realize how significant it all was at the time.
Those clunky devices. Those slow internet connections. Those pixelated screens. They were the first steps toward the always connected, always online world we inhabit now.
Was it better then? In some ways, yes. Technology felt more special because it wasn’t everywhere all the time. Getting online was an event, not a constant state. Phones were phones, not pocket computers demanding constant attention.
But we’re also living in the world those 90s innovations promised. Instant communication with anyone, anywhere. Access to virtually all human knowledge in seconds. Entertainment, education, and connection at our fingertips.
The 90s showed us what was possible. The 2000s and beyond made it reality.
And that old Nokia 3210 in my drawer? I should probably throw it away. But I won’t. Because every time I see it, I remember what it felt like when technology was new, exciting, and full of possibilities.
We’re still living in the future the 90s imagined. We’ve just gotten so used to it that we forgot how amazing it all is.
