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Culture

People in the '90s and early 2000s trying to explain the internet is pure comedy gold

Some were hilariously wrong, but David Bowie's was so spot on it’s almost scary.

internet, 1990s, predictions
Matthew Ball/Twitter

Some in the late '90s and early '00s thought the internet was an overhyped idea doomed to fizzle.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the world before we became completely dependent on the internet could never have predicted what life would be like now. Some of the things the internet has enabled us to do—wireless video chats with friends halfway around the globe, ordering food to be delivered to our door at the click of a few buttons, virtual support groups for every possible interest or ailment—were the stuff of imaginary, far-futuristic worlds, surely not realistic to expect in our lifetimes. (I mean, I figured we'd have flying cars before we'd have computers we could fit in our pockets, yet here we are.)

The 1990s were this weird in-between phase where the tech geeks were all about the .com world and tech-reluctant normies were all, "Gretchen, stop trying to make the internet happen. It's not going to happen." Once the internet started becoming popular, some people did try to predict how it would all turn out.

Some predictions were wrong. Ridiculously, hilariously wrong. And on the flip side, David Bowie, in his apparently infinite wisdom, was so spot on it's almost scary.

Let's look at a prediction that turned out to be embarrassingly off-base. Former Head of Strategy at Amazon Studios Matthew Ball shared a clip from the Daily Mail newspaper in the year 2000 with the headline "Internet 'may be just a passing fad as millions give up on it.'"

"Researchers found that millions were turning their back on the world wide web, frustrated by its limitations and unwilling to pay high access charges," it reads.

"They say that e-mail, far from replacing other forms of communication, is adding to an overload of information."

(Go ahead and pause for maniacal laughter here.)

"Many teenagers are using the internet less now than previously, they conclude, and the future of online shopping is limited."

Ah, the adorable, pre-Amazon naivete.

Even a counter to that piece written by one Jane Wakefield a few days later had some hilarious lines in it. While urging not to throw out the the baby internet with the bathwater, Wakefield wrote, "It should come as no surprise to us that people are failing to see the point of the Internet. If you don't need access to a huge online encyclopaedia, if you don't fancy trying to buy a cheapish CD online, if you don't enjoy watching jerky videos of hardcore porn, then you might be right to question why you need a Net connection. Unlike TV (how many times have you heard the phrase "former TV watcher") the Internet is still dispensable.

Except of course for email."

BWAAHAAHHAAA. That's right. The only indispensable part of the web in 2000 was e-mail, which in some ways feels like the most archaic part of the internet now. Too funny.

David Bowie, on the other hand, predicted the impact the internet would have on society in 1999 and totally nailed it.

He was so right in that we had barely seen the tip of the iceberg in 1999. He was also right in that the impact to society—both good and bad—was unimaginable. Exhilarating and terrifying. We're living that now.

"The context and state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can really envisage at the moment," he said. "Where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympatico it's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about."

Whoa. That's some seriously prescient prognosticating there, Bowie. (He really did see what was coming. He even started his own internet service provider in 1998 while other musicians scoffed at the world wide web.)

Going back just a bit further, Matthew Ball also shared an op-ed from a 1995 Newsweek in which Clifford Stoll writes that he is "most uneasy about this trendy and oversold community" of the internet. Ball said it "reads exactly like Metaverse criticisms."

Indeed, Stoll basically describes our current living situation with "telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms…electronic town meetings and virtual communities" and more as if it were some kind of absurdity.

And maybe it is. After all, he accurately described the other part of our current living situation, which is that "Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harassment, and anonymous threats. When everyone shouts, few listen."

Wowsers. Yep. Good times.

So what did we learn here?

Don't underestimate the future of technology. And always listen to David Bowie. The end.


This article originally appeared on 12.22.21

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Sustainability

A guy planted two potatoes in an Amazon shipping box to prove a point. Mission accomplished.

You should see how many potatoes he got out of this experiment.

The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni/YouTube

Can you grow vegetables in a cardboard box?

In the era of supermarkets and wholesale clubs, growing your own food isn't a necessity for most Americans. But that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to try.

A household garden can be a great way to reduce your grocery bill and increase your intake of nutrient-dense foods. It can also be a good source of exercise and a hobby that gets you outside in the sunshine and fresh air more often. However, not everyone has a yard where they can grow a garden or much outdoor space at all where they live. You can plant things in containers, but that requires some upfront investment in planters.

container garden, growing plants in containers, growing vegetables, homegrown, producePotted plants and herbs can thrive in a container garden.Photo credit: Canva

Or does it? Gardener James Prigioni set out to see if an Amazon shipping box would hold up as a planter for potatoes. He took a basic single-walled Amazon box, lined it with dried leaves to help with moisture retention, added four to five inches of soil (his own homegrown soil he makes), added three dark red seed potatoes, covered them with more soil, added a fertilizer, then watered them.

He also planted a second, smaller Amazon box with two white seed potatoes, following the same steps.

Two weeks later, he had potato plants growing out of the soil. Ten days after that, the boxes were filled with lush plants.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Prigioni explained how to "hill" potato plants when they grow tall enough, which helps encourage more tuber growth and protect the growing potatoes from sunlight. Hilling also helps support the plants as they grow taller so they don't flop over. He also added some mulch to help keep the plants cooler as the summer grew hotter.

After hilling, Prigioni only needed to keep up with watering. Both varieties of potatoes flowered, which let him know the tubers were forming. The red potato leaves developed some pest issues, but not bad enough to need intervention, while the white potato plants were unaffected. "It goes to show how variety selection can make a big difference in the garden," he explained.

The visible plants have to start dying before you harvest potatoes, and Prigioni checked in with the boxes themselves when they got to that point.

vegetable garden, growing potatoes, grow potatoes in a cardboard box, Amazon box, farmingFreshly harvested potatoes are so satisfying.Photo credit: Canva

"I am pleasantly surprised with how well the boxes held up," he said, especially for being single-walled boxes. The smaller box was completely intact, while the larger box had begun to split in one corner but not enough to affect the plants' growth. "This thing was completely free to grow in, so you can't beat that," he pointed out.

Prigioni predicted that the red potatoes grown in the larger box would be more productive. As he cut open the box and pulled potatoes from the larger box, they just kept coming, ultimately yielding several dozen potatoes of various sizes. The smaller box did have a smaller yield, but still impressive just from two potatoes planted in an Amazon box.

People often think they don't have room to grow their own food, which is why Prigioni put these potato boxes on his patio. "A lot of people have an area like this," he said.

"I will never look at cardboard boxes the same," Prigioni added. "There are so many uses for them in the garden and it's just a great free resource we have around, especially if you're ordering stuff from Amazon all the time."

cardboard box, container garden, amazon box, growing vegetables, gardeningDo you see a box or do you see a planter?Photo credit: Canva

People loved watching Prigioni's experiment and shared their own joy—and success—in growing potatoes in a similar fashion:

"I have been growing potatoes in every box I can find for several years now. I have had excellent success. I honestly think potatoes prefer cardboard. And yes, most of my boxes were from Amazon."

"I live in an upstairs apartment with a little deck and I have a container garden with containers on every single stair leading to the deck. I grow potatoes in a laundry basket. It's amazing how much food I can get from this type of garden!! Grateful."

"I literally got up and grabbed the empty boxes by our front door, the potatoes that have started to sprout, and soil i had inside and started my planting at 1am. Lol. I will take them outside today and finish. Thank you James!"

"I grew potatoes and tomatoes on my tiny balcony in Germany (in buckets and cardboard boxes). Now I have a big garden here in America. I so love to grow my own food."

"I grew sweet potatoes in cardboard boxes. It’s so much fun."

Next time you're stuck with an Amazon box that you don't have a use for, consider whether you could use it as a planter for potatoes or some other edible harvest. Gardening doesn't have to be fancy to be effective.

You can find more of gardening experiments on The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni.

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Science

8th grader's award-winning experiment tested if dogs' tongues are really cleaner than ours

Here's what science says about letting your dog lick your face.

Photo credit: Canva

Should you let a dog lick your face?

With nearly half of the households in American having at least one dog, there's a lot people need to know about them. Our furry friends come in wide variety of breeds, each with their own unique traits and needs. "Man's best friend" can be a guardian, a helpful worker, a loyal friend, and a snuggly companion, but there's one thing almost all dogs have in common: Licking.

Some dogs lick way more than others, but it's rare to find a dog who never licks anyone or anything. Many dogs communicate and show affection by licking, which is sweet—if a little gross—depending on how slobbery they are. There's a common saying that dogs' mouths are cleaner than humans', which is a bit hard to believe when you see what some dogs put in their mouths, but it is true? What does science say about dog tongues and saliva? Is a dog licking our face something we should worry about?

dogs, dog mouths clean, dog tongues, dog licking, should you let a dog lick your facePooch smooches are sweet if they're not too slobbery.Photo credit: Canva

It turns out, the answer to whether a dog's mouth is cleaner than ours isn't super straightforward.

An 8th grader named Abby tackled this question in a science experiment that won her a Young Naturalists Award from the American Museum of Natural History in 2011. Her family had gotten a dog and her mom kept telling her not to let the dog lick her face because dog mouths are full of bacteria. Instead of arguing, Abby decided to find out herself if this was true.

"I hypothesized that human tongues would be cleaner than dog tongues," she wrote. "I thought this because humans brush their teeth at least once a day. I hypothesized that dogs' tongues would be dirty because they were always licking dirty things like garbage."

After diving into the research about bacteria that live in and on humans and dogs, Abby decided she had a testable hypothesis. But this wasn't any old middle school science experiment. She applied for and got a grant to the State Hygienic Lab at the University of Iowa, where she was assigned a mentor to work with her.

You can read the nitty gritty details of her experiment here, but here was her conclusion:

dogs, dog mouths clean, dog tongues, dog licking, should you let a dog lick your faceMany dogs will lick you if you give them the chance. Photo credit: Canva

"I concluded that dog and human mouth flora are very different. (Flora means the bacteria found in a mouth or anywhere else.) The bacteria found in human mouths are more similar to another human's oral bacteria than the bacteria found in a dog's mouth.

I also concluded that dogs' mouths are cleaner than humans' in some ways, and dirtier in other ways. Humans have more bacteria in their mouths than dogs do, based on the total number of bacteria. Most of the humans had a 'moderate' number of bacteria, and most of the dogs had 'few' bacteria. A possible explanation of this might be that dogs pant a lot, and maybe while panting, bacteria falls off their tongues along with their saliva. But dogs had more types of bacteria. The average number of different bacterial colonies in a dog's mouth was about 5.7. The average number of different bacterial colonies in a human's mouth was about 4.1. I think this is so because dogs sniff and lick a variety of things, like carpets, floors, chairs, grass, etc., so they pick up bacteria from many places."

But what about the licking of our faces? That's a bit of a subjective call, but Abby's results gave her some peace of mind:

"In conclusion, will I let my dog continue to lick me? The answer to the question is yes!" she wrote. "I will feel guiltless about letting my dog lick me because I found out that human and dog oral bacteria are different, so my dog's oral bacteria present no harm to me."

lick, licking, face, dogs, dogpuppy love kiss GIF by Pickler & BenGiphy

What do the experts say?

According to Colin Harvey, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine and executive secretary at the American Veterinary Dental College, comparing dogs' mouths to humans' mouth is "like comparing apples to oranges." As Abby found, the microbes in a dog's mouth are very different than those in a human's.

The American Kennel Club elaborates:

"Most of the bacteria in your dog’s mouth aren’t zoonotic, which means you probably won’t get a disease from a big old doggy kiss. There are exceptions to this. Dogs that eat a raw diet are at an increased risk of contracting salmonella, which can be spread to humans. You also probably shouldn’t share kisses with a dog that regularly raids the litter box.

In other words, kissing your dog is less risky than kissing another human, but that doesn’t mean that your dog’s mouth is necessarily cleaner than a human’s—they just have a mostly incompatible set of germs."

dogs, dog mouths, dog kisses, dog teeth cleaningKeep your dog's mouth clean with regular teeth brushing.Photo credit: Canva

Keeping your dog's mouth healthy through regular teeth cleaning and dental check-ups can also help prevent issues that could potentially come from dog licks.

So there you have it. If your dog doesn't eat a raw diet and doesn't go snacking in the cat box (or some other equally fecal-bacteria-ridden place), their kisses are probably not going to hurt you. Guilt-free pooch smooches for the win!

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Joy

CEO shares 5 things he's 'sick' of hearing from his staff and people are applauding him for it

"People are sick of being treated like children."

via Rob Dance (used with permission).

CEO Rob Dance holds a list of things he's "sick" of hearing from his employees.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted workplaces worldwide, there has been a greater push for improved work-life balance and many companies are taking notice. The exciting thing is that when companies become more flexible, their employees become happier and more productive. It’s a win-win for all involved.

Rob Dance, the CEO of ROCK, a technology consulting company in the UK, recently went viral for posting about his approach to work-life balance on Instagram. What, at first, appeared to be a CEO reprimanding his employees revealed a boss who knows how to get the best out of his team by treating them like adults.

The post was of Dance holding a whiteboard that reads:

Things I’m sick of hearing from my employees:

- Can I leave early today

- I’ll be late in the morning

- My child is sick, can I rush off

- I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, is that okay

- I’m going to be late back from lunch, I’ve got some things to sort.

I don’t care.

I hired you for a job and I fully TRUST you to get it done.

I don’t need you to account for every single hour.

Times have changed, and the workplace is different these days.

People are sick of being treated like children.

All that should matter is that everyone is happy, and that the work gets done.


He also shared his advice for companies on how to treat their employees. “Treat your staff like adults. That’s it, that’s the big secret,” he wrote. “Give them autonomy. Respect that they have lives outside of work. Don’t gaslight them into being grateful for not being fired every day.” Because in the end, the only thing that matters is if they get the job done. “Output should always trump hours,” he concluded.

Upworthy contacted Dance, who explained why managers still hesitate to treat their employees like adults.

“Many bosses don't trust their employees and keep extremely close tabs on them because of past experiences and a desire for control. They might believe that micromanaging ensures productivity and prevents issues,” he told Upworthy. “Additionally, the pressure to meet business targets can drive bosses to monitor employees obsessively, thinking it will lead to better outcomes. This approach, however, only undermines trust and destroys morale in the workplace. It creates a toxic environment where employees feel undervalued and stressed, leading to higher turnover rates and decreased overall performance. Instead of fostering a culture of accountability and growth, this behavior only promotes fear and resentment.”


Dance says that technology has helped drive demand for improved work-life balance.

“Mobile technology definitely started to blur the lines between one’s professional and personal life, making it tough to switch off from work,” he told Upworthy. “As a millennial leader, I've always valued work-life harmony for my staff, helping them to achieve both flexibility and finding purpose in their work.”

The ROCK CEO also has advice for employees who’d like to gain their employer’s trust.

“Always deliver quality work and aim to meet or exceed expectations. Keep communication lines open by regularly updating your manager on your progress, challenges, and successes,” he told Upworthy. “Take the initiative to go beyond basic requirements, showing your willingness to contribute more. Act with integrity by always being honest and ethical. Seek honest feedback and make tangible improvements based on it, demonstrating your commitment to growth. Finally, a big one is building positive relationships with everyone you work with, as strong connections are what help to build real trust.”

In April 2025, Dance shared some additional wisdom that highlights the power of leaders prioritizing culture. He took a photo of himself holding a whiteboard with some more wisdom that all CEOs should take to heart: "An employee who leaves for the salary might return for the culture, but if they leave because of the culture, no salary will ever bring them back."

It makes you wonder, if the money was right, which previous jobs would you go back to, and which ones would you reject?


rob dance, work-life balance, ROCK UK, bosess, pto, time off, employee complaintsCEO Rob Dance holds up a whipe board with his culture philosophy. www.linkedin.com


This article originally appeared last year.

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Family

Mom's clever 'take-out' trick is the ultimate hack to get kids to eat homemade food

Diabolical? Yes. Genius? Also yes.

Photo credit: Canva

This hack would work on adults as well.

Honestly, what parent hasn’t told a little white lie to their kids here and there to make life easier? Especially when it comes to food-related things, whether that be sneaking in a veggie or two into “safe” meals, making healthy snacks seem a little more fun and novel by mimicking charcuterie boards, or in one mom’s case, concocting an elaborate ruse to make homemade food look like takeout.

Mom Alex MacLaren is clearly a good cook, making anything from chicken cacciatore to blueberry banana loaf to fancy Greek salad. And yet, even she has a hard time getting her kids to eat her restaurant-worthy meals. That is, until she started telling them it was from a restaurant.

In the video below, we see MacLaren’s ploy in action. “We ordered in food, this is an Italian place. They sent us a lot of food, you guys!” she announces while unpacking a brown paper bag.

@mac.larena 🚨 NEW SERIES 🚨 Takeout but made at home 🤭 #easyweeknightmeals #momlife ♬ original sound - Alex ✨ we use what we have ✨


MacLaren goes full method on this, having the beans, tortellini minestrone soup and chicken dish with rice in their own legit to-go trays. And the kids, well, they eat it up. Literally.

“Who wants soup and who wants chicken?” we hear MacLaren ask, to which the children cheer “Me,” “Chicken!” and “I want the big one!”

In an interview withToday, MacLaren shared that she first got the idea a few months prior, after ordering takeout containers from Amazon to pack her daughter’s lunches. It worked so well for lunch, she figured it had to be a nifty dinner hack as well. And she was correct. MacLaren has only played this trick a small handful of times so far, but it’s worked every time.

Like below, where she convinces the kiddos that they are eating from a Greek restaurant, compatible with garlic pita bread. For a second there’s a close call when one of McLaren's kids says “Wait, that’s the same container ...” but she quickly evades, replying, “All the restaurants use the same containers.”

@mac.larena Replying to @Shira the plot thickens 😅 #easyweeknightmeals #momlife ♬ original sound - Alex ✨ we use what we have ✨


Needless to say, many, many fellow parents are pretty amazed by this scheme.

“Mommy marketing wins again,” one viewer quipped, while another said, "It’s all about the rebrand.”

Another even joked, “Those kids are masters at being gaslit. As a human, be ashamed. As a mom, you’re my hero!!!!”

Apparently, MacLaren isn’t the only mom to have this rebrand idea. One person shared, “I do this! My son loves Chinese but not when I make it. Little does he know, I have been making it and just putting it in takeout containers. He eats it the same as when we order in.”

One viewer asked the question sure to be on many of our minds: “how do the kids not see MacLaren cooking up this “fake out take-out”? In a follow-up video, MacLaren quells our curiosity by revealing the basement she secretly plugs her crock pot in. Now that’s commitment.

@mac.larena Replying to @Jess nothing to see here 😉 #takeoutathome #momlife #easyweeknightmeals ♬ Originalton - Matway


Yet another even admitted, “I fear this would work on me as an adult.” which is so true. There’s something about food “magically" landing on your doorstop, practically gift-wrapped, that makes it feel much more special than having to slave over a hot stove. Of course, the oils and flavor enhancers don’t hurt, either.

As far as her feelings about lying to her kids are concerned, MacLaren admitted to Today that “gaslighting is a pretty big part of my parenting strategy,” adding, “Why are we overthinking everything?” And perhaps she has a point. Sometimes the ends really do justify the means. Especially when it comes to getting kids to eat their dang food.

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Democracy

The gap in crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and U.S. natives is huge

New study suggests we need to rethink our attitudes on immigration.

via David Tan/Flickr

A man being arrested by the police.

Immigration was one of the biggest issues in the 2024 presidential election, and it helped propel Donald Trump to his second presidential term. Last year saw a significant shift in public opinion on immigration, with 55% of Americans believing that immigration levels should be decreased, the highest number in nearly 20 years.

One of the biggest reasons that people fear immigrants, both legal and undocumented, is that they believe they commit a disproportionate number of crimes and pose a danger to natural-born citizens. Polls show that 47% of Americans believe that immigrants increase crime in the United States.

It’s no surprise that many feel this way, given the increasingly polarized political rhetoric surrounding immigrants. Over the past decade, prominent politicians have referred to immigrants as “invaders,” “animals,” and “rapists,” who shouldn't come to America. Some have even suggested that they are being allowed in the country to “replace” white Americans.

immigration, crime, arrests, ICE, undocumented people, immigration lawA man being arrested by ICE.via ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations/Flickr

In addition to the abrasive rhetoric, a lot of Americans have also developed negative attitudes towards immigration because they fear foreign-born people will change the culture and could pose a threat to their employment. A majority of Americans have also been alarmed by years of chaos at the southern border.

Immigration is a complex issue that evokes strong emotions, so we must distinguish fact from rhetoric to craft humane policies that support a system where immigrants and native-born Americans thrive together. That’s why a recent report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning public policy research organization, is so important. The report shows that the fear-mongering over immigrant crime is unfounded and that native-born Americans pose a much greater threat to their safety.

Do immigrants commit more crime?

The study, conducted by Michelangelo Landgrave and Alex Nowrasteh, utilized American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) from the US Census data from 2010 to 2023 to determine the crime rate per capita among undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and natural-born Americans. They found that undocumented people are incarcerated at about half the rate, per capita, than native-born Americans and that legal immigrants commit crimes at about half the rate of undocumented immigrants.

Here’s the Cato Institute's findings:

An estimated 1,617,197 native-born Americans, 67,813 illegal immigrants, and 58,515 legal immigrants were incarcerated in 2023. The incarceration rate for native-born Americans was 1,221 per 100,000; 613 per 100,000 for illegal immigrants; and 319 per 100,000 for legal immigrants in 2022 (Figure 1). Illegal immigrants are half as likely to be incarcerated as native-born Americans. Legal immigrants are 74 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives. If native-born Americans were incarcerated at the same rate as illegal immigrants, about 806,000 fewer natives would be incarcerated. Conversely, if natives were incarcerated at the same rate as legal immigrants, about 1.2 million fewer native-born Americans would be incarcerated.


Further, the report shows that if you removed the people in ICE detention facilities on any given day, the undocumented crime rate would fall to 357 per 100,000 people, only 12% higher than that of legal immigrants.

Nowrasteh speculates that there are multiple reasons why undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than natural-born citizens. He suggests that they are more future-oriented because they faced huge risks in coming to the U.S. They also fear the consequences of committing crimes, including deportation, and often have stronger social bonds that discourage them from breaking the law.

The interesting change over the first 100 days of the new administration is that even though people were very concerned about the state of immigration, they are now turning against its aggressive and legally questionable deportation strategies. This points to a unique balance among Americans that shows they are concerned about immigration but also care for immigrants who are unfairly targeted by the system. Hopefully, Americans’ concern for immigrants’ welfare will be matched by a clearer understanding of the actual safety risks they pose, paving the way for policies that benefit everyone.

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