Yeah, no. Sorry to be so contrary but this sounds like nostalgia, not reality.

In many ways, we've reached the "plateau of productivity" for many of the promises of the 80s and 90s and I suspect that's why this sentiment persists. The reality of now is not as good as the promise of the 80s-90s but it's definitely better than the reality of the 80s and 90s.

I remember talking to people in the 80s and 90s and them talking with reverence about bands like Nitzer Ebb, Front 242, Jesus and Mary Chain etc. and me just "not getting it". I realize why, I just didn't like them very much. In theory I liked this type of music, but the bands were all not very polished and there was just something missing.

Cut to years, small bands that would have been forgotten or fizzled out before they could release anything all have an internet presence and do this type of sound better than the bands they're emulating: Schwefelgelb [1], Second Still [2], Linea Aspera [3], Boy Harsher [4] etc.

Want 80s synthesizer music that's orders of magnitude better than the 80s? Try Com Truise [5], Airglow [6], or a host of onther "synthwave" musicians [7].

And in terms of tech, there's just absolutely no comparison. We can literally buy full fledged GHz linux boxes for under $20 that run at 1.25W [10]. For the intrepid, they can create radio from software with a USB dongle that costs under $50. Want to make a custom computer? Have it assembled in China and shipped for a minuscule cost of what it would have been 2-3 decades ago.

One of the things I think you're forgetting about the 80s and 90s was just how stark it was. You should check out shows like "Halt and Catch Fire" [8] and "Mixed-ish" [9]. They both highlight portions of that time period that were awesome but they also show just how shitty portions of that time period were. You're forgetting the stack of floppies, the game booklets with beautiful art only to find games that looked like pixelated blobs, the waiting for the ISP line to stop being busy, the shitty television with 10 minutes of ads for every 20 minutes of content.

A telling example is the magazine 2600. When I was growing up, 2600 was a coveted magazine that was full of promise about the secrets of the burgeoning tech world. It was quintessentially cyberpunk and it was great. Cut to now, 2600 is still in circulation but only up until very recently [11] refused to have an online presence, only putting out a paper magazine and being sold in chains like Barnes and Nobles. They became increasingly irrelevant with the access to knowledge on the internet and then doubly so by refusing to graduate from their 80s aesthetic.

I recently had someone show me their zine that was either printed or "authentically" xeroxed and painstakingly stapled together. This is cargo cult punk rock and indulges in all the empty aesthetics of counter culture without understanding the reason they existed in the first place. Xerox zines rose in prominence because they were a "printing press" that was an order of magnitude cheaper than any alternative. People wanted to disseminate knowledge and photo-copiers were the most expedient way to do that.

Today we have blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Digital Ocean, etc. but they've become so commonplace that the older generation looks back on a "simpler time", when kids could put on a show by "word of mouth". There was a show I just saw that said "the internet is how you advertise by word of mouth now".

I think there will always be people in a generation that will be nostalgiac for the previous decade they weren't part of. The only thing i can say is that there will always be an older generation talking about their glory days of when they scored the winning touchdown in high school and a portion of the younger generation that gets caught up in that narrative.

I feel like I'm living in an age of wonder.

[1] https://schwefelgelb.bandcamp.com/album/dahinter-das-gesicht

[2] https://secondstill.bandcamp.com/

[3] https://lineaaspera.bandcamp.com/

[4] https://boyharsher.bandcamp.com/album/lesser-man-ep

[5] https://comtruise.bandcamp.com/album/in-decay

[6] https://airglow-strat.bandcamp.com/album/airglow-memory-bank

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Synthwave_musicians

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series...

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-ish

[10] https://www.adafruit.com/product/3400

[11] https://www.2600.com/content/message-our-readers