Be Not Careful What You Wish For

John Scalzi is one of the few people who, after reading his stuff, makes me think, “Damn, I wish I’d written that.”

Well, he does it again with this piece full of wishes that the ’90s had never happened. And not just wishes — he provides lots of evidence that 1990-1999 simply failed to occur in any manner whatsoever.

Imagine for a moment that all those dollars we made in the dotcom run-up never happened. Imagine further that WorldCom, GE, Enron, and every other company recording huge profits in the ’90s never really made a dime; it was all just slick accounting. Imagine, too, that internet communications, Amazon.com, cheap credit, and easy mortgages had never happened.

But in the end, who cares?

I mean, I still managed to get a lot of really cool stuff.