2005 was a sweet spot.
So many modern conveniences were available thanks to wide-spread home Internet access, GPS, and mature mass fabrication for electronics. Google Maps. Garmin and Tom Tom car-mounted GPS. eBay. Online banking. Free video calls around the world. Flat screen televisions and monitors. It was an exciting time for gaming, movie-going, and music.
The good
Affordable housing. Affordable groceries. Humans in customer service. Work that ended at five. No remote work, but you didn’t need it because work was so much less taxing. If you paid for it, it kept working – your word processor, your home movies, your car, etc. Companies weren’t repackaging everything as a subscription. No devices were constantly demanding your attention. Batteries were replaceable in everything including phones and laptops. Your TV, fridge and oven didn’t put up their own ads or sell your data. Google was usable and nascent social media was all about you.
The bad
Homophobia and transphobia more institutionalized, but on the street it was about the same. Books and movies by queer people were a drip. More cash-only places. No same-day shipping. Take-out was limited to Chinese food or pizza. Domestic violence was more tolerated.
The future
There’s no way to bring the better aspects of 2005 back, because it doesn’t improve corporate profits. There’s been two decades of innovation about how to extract more wealth from us, and the poorer we get, the more locked-in we get into the breadcrumbs they feed us in return.
What government wants to stand in the way of increased productivity, which in this economy, means another way to extract more out of you.
Companies weren’t more benevolent in 2005, they were just constrained by the technology of the time. It all changed with an announcement on January 9, 2007 and the Great Recession.