Hopes, Disillusions & Tech Acceleration - Journeying Through the 90s with Prof. James Brooke-Smith

Xennials, The Last Analogue Generation

What do Emmanuel Macron, Mark Zuckerberg, Jacinda Ardern, Rishi Sunak and Volodymyr Zelensky all have in common? They are Xennials, the last, micro-generation of ‘analogue’ children who came of age in the 1990s during peak globalisation and before the digital economy took off.

In this first episode in the new series, Charlotte Kan, together with a leading authority on the decade, Professor James Brooke-Smith, teacher of English and film studies at the University of Ottawa in Canada and author of ‘Accelerate! A History of the 1990s’, discusses the highlights of the decade and looks at what impact the ’90s had on today’s world.

James sums up the 90s as "One of the most transformative historical shifts of the modern era, equivalent to the invention of printing."

We explore a decade that begins with high hopes in 1989 & the Fall of the Berlin Wall and ends, tragically, with 9/11. Our discussion spans Francis Fukuyama's 'End of History', grunge and the Detroit acid house/techno scene, NAFTA, WTO, neoliberalism and the perks of globalisation, an increasingly connected world, Digital Utopianism, our first mobile phones, whether 'Xennials' are even a thing and a seemingly extinct staple of the 90s: irony...We conclude with a 'Xennial Quiz' (favourite book, band, movie, gadget of the 90s?)