Latest news with #genX
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
End of an era: AOL to discontinue its dial-up internet service after 30 years
The hisses, pings and screeches that introduced millions of Americans to the nascent online world are to be formally retired when AOL's dial-up internet shuts down in late September. AOL, or America Online, said recently it was discontinuing the decided old-school connection option after an evaluation of its products and services and would no longer support dial-up software on 30 September. The date portends the end of an era for millions of Americans of a certain age – millennials, gen Xers, boomers and those of the greatest generation. The characteristic sound of modems conducting an analog handshake to establish a connection was a preliminary soundtrack to a new world of instant connection, wires, handheld computer mice, emails, chatrooms, instant messages and glowing screens. The dial-up internet wasn't invented by a single person. It was developed by Usenet in the late 1970s. In 1979, CompuServe began 'offering a dial-up online information service to consumers'. By the mid 1980s, with the Well, or the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, founded in the Bay Area by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant, virtual communities began to form. At the same time, in 1985, America Online was founded. At its peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s, AOL had over 23 million subscribers in the US, making it the dominant internet service provider at the time. According to Jigso AI, it was estimated to have gained a new user every six seconds. America Online became so dominant – with its equally characteristic but more cheery 'You've Got Mail' message – that in 1999 it acquired Time Warner in a massive $165bn all-stock deal that later became regarded as one of the most disastrous deals in media and communications history. By then, the introduction of faster cable internet service in 1995 that relied on existing cable TV infrastructure made the characteristic handshake of dial-up begin to disappear. Currently, only a small fraction of US households – about 175,000 – still rely on dial-up for internet access and web browser platforms. Web browsers themselves are a relic of the 80s and 90s, when they were subject to fierce wars between Microsoft and Netscape. AI has started to encroach on browsers' territory. The growth of dial-up internet – sometimes attributed in part to demand for pornography – and its subsequent decline to faster internet services, may now be mourned in concert with other pop cultural relics of decades past, including CDs, pagers and landlines.
ABC News
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
New series Duster takes inspiration from 70s B-movies and FBI's first female Black agent
Few people in Hollywood know how to weaponise nostalgia like JJ Abrams. His slick updates of Star Trek and Star Wars helped usher in Hollywood's current era of the legacy reboot, where all kinds of disposable gen X trash have been retconned into hallowed cultural touchstones. (Karate Kid: Legends releases May 30.) Even Abrams's sole original film, Super 8, was a shameless love letter to Spielberg that recycled all the familiar Amblin tropes, albeit with fewer oedipal undertones. Fast facts about Duster What: A young FBI agent teams up with a getaway driver in the early 1970s to take down a crime organisation operating across the American Southwest. Created by: JJ Abrams and LaToya Morgan Starring: Josh Holloway, Rachel Hilson, Keith David Where: Streaming weekly on Max (soon to be HBO Max, I guess) Likely to make you feel: Like putting on an actual 70s crime movie Six years after his latest film — 2019's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — Abrams has returned to his TV roots with another period pastiche, accompanied by co-creator LaToya Morgan (The Walking Dead). Duster mercifully steers away from the 80s, and instead cruises through the 70s B-movie milieu of muscle cars, dirty cops, wah wah pedals and tight getaways, all while taking inspiration from Sylvia Mathis, the first Black female FBI agent. Rachel Hilson (Love, Victor) stars as Nina Hayes, a fresh addition to the bureau who requests an assignment in Arizona, where she has eyes on a criminal enterprise operated by Keith David's (Community) Ezra — a magnanimous family man first, and mob boss second. (If there is a reason to watch the show, it's the delight of listening to David cajole, threaten and swear in his fabulously melodic voice.) Other agents have tried and failed to make inroads into the syndicate; Hayes's sceptical colleagues relish harassing and discrediting the young upstart, who's perceived as a mere diversity hire. Hilson shares top billing with Josh Holloway (Lost), who exudes an unflappable, gentlemanly charm as Ezra's faithful getaway driver, Jim. His buffed red Plymouth, magnificent mane (cinematically flapping in the wind during high-speed pursuits) and taut physique are all meticulously maintained — the rest coasts by off pure vibes. When he offers a shared drink during the brief lull of a life-and-death brawl, you understand why his opponent accepts. At the same time, Jim's habit of playing fast and loose with the law precludes him from sharing a stable life with his young daughter — and when Hayes digs up a conspiracy that hits close to home, he reluctantly becomes her ticket into his cutthroat world. The leads share an affable, sometimes uneasy chemistry — the put-together pro and the ambitious rookie with something to prove, but situated on opposing sides of the law. Each episode reflects this dynamic by integrating procedural cop storylines with underworld dealings, their worlds overlapping as Hayes's investigation turns the heat up on Jim. Those hoping to see white-knuckle, Bullitt-esque chases every week may feel short-changed, as the series largely trades in gunfights and fisticuffs. Duster nonetheless gets solid mileage out of its handful of practical car stunts. There's a satisfying heft to vehicles flipping into the air, swivelling on handbrake turns and getting mangled well beyond a trip to the mechanic. The high point of the show's retro setpieces is a Fourth of July chase that sees gunfire traded with fireworks. Yet all the charm and fast cars in the world can't outrun the pacing woes of streaming TV. You can feel the story spinning its wheels as it ekes eight 45-minute episodes out of a breezy, buddy-cop movie premise. The stakes are raised and dispatched in a perfunctory fashion each episode. Tragic backstories, breadcrumb plotting, and perfunctory double-crosses ensure the show is rarely in a hurry. Traces of a looming conspiracy — reaching all the way to Capitol Hill — take too long to materialise. As a throwback, Duster also fails to reignite the spark of its forebears. The dialogue is too slick for its own good, shoehorning JJ's snappy, too-clever-by-half cadence into the mouths of hard-boiled criminals and grizzled agents. Its co-creator's fingerprints are also present in how eagerly characters gush about the pop culture of its time; barely an episode goes by without a movie poster in the background. A subplot involving one of Howard Hughes's vintage cars is a fun exception to the show's tiresome references. What's genuinely inconceivable is how Duster was allowed to look so murky, flat and monotonous — far below the standard of 2000s network TV during Abrams's prime. Characters are dispassionately lit, turning detailed period fits into cheap-looking costumes. An excess of dusty yellows and faded blues make even the scorching American Southwest feel cool to the touch. The irony, of course, is that the kinds of 70s cinema that Duster cribs from (the films of Hal Needham and Blaxploitation flicks, chiefly) are infinitely more stylish while having been produced for a fraction of the cost. That filmmaking ethos was about getting every penny on screen; the streaming approach seems to assume that its audiences will be on their phones anyway.
West Australian
12-05-2025
- General
- West Australian
THE ECONOMIST: Forget millennials & gen Z, pity the forgotten generation X hitting midlife in the modern age
'We suffer', said Seneca, 'more often in imagination than in reality.' The Stoic philosopher could have been talking about the generations. Members of gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, say that social media ruined their childhood. Millennials, between 1981 and 1996, complain that they cannot buy a house. Baby boomers, between 1946 and 1964, grouse that they face an uncertain retirement. Many forget about generation X, which is made up of those born between 1965 and 1980. Proxied by Google searches the world is less than half as interested in gen X as it is in millennials, gen Zers or baby-boomers. There are few podcasts or memes about gen X. Aside from Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture, which popularised the moniker, there are few books discussing the cohort. In Britain gen Xers are less likely than members of any other age group to know the generation to which they belong. Gen Xers may have no place in the popular imagination but, contrary to Seneca, they really do suffer. This is true both because gen Xers are at a tricky age, and also because the cohort itself is cursed. A recent 30-country poll by Ipsos finds that 31 per cent of gen Xers say they are 'not very happy' or 'not happy at all', the most of any generation. David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College finds all sorts of nasty things, from unhappiness to anxiety to despair, top out around the age of 50. This is consistent with the 'U-bend of life' theory, which suggests that people are happy when young and old, but miserable in middle age. Baby-boomers went through it; before long millennials will, too. The U-bend exists in part because chronic health issues start to emerge in middle age. People also come to realise they will not achieve everything they had hoped in their careers. On top of this, gen Xers often have to look after both their children and their parents. In America they devote 5 per cent of their spending to caring for people under 18 or over 65, against just 2 per cent for boomers. In Italy the share of 18-to-34-year-olds living with their parents has increased from 61 per cent to 68 per cent over the past two decades. In Spain the rise is even more dramatic. To which generation do many of these parents belong? gen X. In America, nowhere is life more U-shaped than in San Francisco. The city's idealistic youngsters believe that they will start the next big AI company, and are willing to put up with high costs and crime. Successful boomers live in enormous houses in Pacific Heights and sit on company boards. Gen Xers, in the middle, have neither the idealism nor the sinecures. Only 37 per cent are happy with life in San Francisco, compared with 63 per cent of gen Zers, according to a poll in 2022 by the local paper San Francisco Standard. Many have little option but to live in Oakland — the horror! — if they want a big house. Although gen Xers will in time escape the U-bend, they will remain losers in other ways. Consider their incomes. Gen Xers do earn more after inflation than earlier generations — the continuation of a long historical trend, and one from which both millennials and gen Zers also benefit. But their progress has been slow. A recent paper by Kevin Corinth of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, and Jeff Larrimore of the Federal Reserve assesses American household incomes by generation, after accounting for taxes, government transfers and inflation. From the ages of 36 to 40 gen Xers' real household incomes were only 16 per cent higher than the previous generation at the same age, the smallest improvement of any cohort. Perhaps this poor income growth is a consequence of a stereotype that a range of psychological studies have confirmed: gen Xers are reluctant to be corporate drones, placing more emphasis on work-life balance and autonomy. It is no coincidence that in 1999, when gen Xers were in the prime of their lives, there were two hugely successful films in which people broke free of life's shackles. In 'The Matrix' Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer, discovers the world is an illusion simulated by intelligent machines. In the movie Fight Club, an office worker joins a secret society whose members kick lumps out of each other. All very exciting, of course — but hardly conducive to a solid career. Gen Xers have, to be fair, faced difficult circumstances. People's earnings typically rise fast in their 30s and 40s, as they move into managerial roles. Unfortunately for gen Xers, when they were in that age range labour markets were weak, following the global financial crisis of 2007-09. In 2011, for instance, the median nominal earnings of British people in their 30s rose by just 1.1 per cent. Earnings growth in Italy, which was hit hard by the euro crisis, was just as poor. And in Canada from 2011 to 2017 the real median earnings of people aged 35 to 44 years did not grow at all. Gen Xers have also done a poor job accumulating wealth. During the 1980s, when many boomers were in their 30s, global stockmarkets quadrupled. Millennials, now in their 30s, have so far enjoyed strong market returns. But during the 2000s, when gen Xers were hoping to make hay, markets fell slightly. That period was a lost decade for American stocks in particular, coming after the dotcom bubble and ending with the financial crisis. What about home-ownership, the ultimate symbol of intergenerational unfairness? The conventional narrative contrasts perma-renting millennials with boomers who enjoy six spare bedrooms. Yet data on American home-ownership, provided by Victoria Gregory of the St Louis branch of the Fed, overturns this received wisdom. In fact, the big decline in home-ownership rates happened from boomers to gen Xers. Starting in their late 30s and early 40s, gen Xers of a given age had a similar chance of owning as millennials do. Aversion to home-ownership is in some cases a choice. Gen Xers may have imbibed a passage from Mr Coupland's novel: 'When someone tells you they've just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality.' But, again, circumstances are probably a bigger factor. From their late 30s to their early 40s, the time when many people first get on the housing ladder, gen Xers suffered from the effects of the financial crisis. It became harder to get a mortgage. Some of those who already had one foreclosed on their house and went back to renting. Aggregate statistics capture all these trends. Jeremy Horpedahl of the University of Central Arkansas tracks average wealth by generation, using data produced by the Fed. He finds that, at 31, the millennial/gen Z cohort has about double the wealth that the average gen Xer had at the same age. Using survey data from the European Central Bank we find suggestive evidence of similar trends in Europe. From 2010 to 2021, millennials in the euro area tripled their nominal net worth, versus less than a doubling for gen Xers. The position of gen Xers may not improve much in the years ahead, particularly Americans. They could be the first to suffer owing to broken or changing retirement funding systems. America's social-security fund is projected to be depleted by 2033 — just as gen Xers start to retire — meaning benefits will be cut by 20-25 per cent unless Congress acts. Next time you see a quinquagenarian, at least give them a smile
