On this day twenty years ago, September 10th 2001, the following things did not exist:

• Euro coins and banknotes; real physical €uro currency was released the following year in January 2002 [1]
• The iPhone, iPad, iPod, iOS, smartphones and tablets. A new device called the “iPod” was released the following month in October 2001, swiftly followed by a tsunami of mobile devices and iThings. [2]
• YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, TikTok and indeed any form of social media. Do you sometimes wish we could go back to a world without social media? Oh Happy days!
• Deadly viruses such as SARS, MERS and SARS‑CoV‑2, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Any kind of usable videotelephony service for the masses: Skype, Zoom, FaceTime, Teams, Whatever…

On this day twenty years ago, September 10th 2001, the following events were yet to take place:

• The September 11 attacks (2001)
• The War in Afghanistan (2001-2021)
• The Iraq War (2003-2011)
• The Global financial crisis (2007)
• The Arab Spring (from 2011)
• The UK-EU membership referendum (2016)
• The Presidential campaign of Donald Trump (2016)
• The COVID-19 pandemic (from 2019)

On this day twenty years ago, September 10th 2001, the global average temperature was about ~0.5°C lower and the following things did exist in a significantly cooler global climate:

• Apple existed but was yet to release all the iThings mentioned above and its App Store (cash cow)
• Amazon existed but was yet to release Amazon Prime, Amazon Web Services (another cash cow) and Amazon Alexa
• Google existed but was only three years old and yet to release (or acquire) Android, Gmail, Google AdSense (yet another cash cow), Google Maps, Google Play and Google Cloud Platform. Google had just turned their first profit in three years of business and had been recently granted a patent for PageRank, their algorithm for ranking search results. [3]
• Lehman Brothers existed but had just seven years left on the clock before filing for bankruptcy in 2008
• Microsoft existed but was yet to release the XBox, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Teams
• The World Trade Center was still standing in New York
• A new online encyclopedia called the Wikipedia existed, but was only eight months old, relatively small and unheard of.

(As predicted, software has eaten the world, or at least it has taken a very big bite of our communication and commerce)

On this day twenty years ago, September 10th 2001, trillions of dollars were about to be spent fighting wars in which:

• Thousands of civilians on all sides were killed
• Thousands of combatants on all sides were killed

(May they rest in peace)

On this day twenty years ago, September 10th 2001, the western world was a very different place. Did a lot more happen in the last twenty years (2001—2021), than in the preceding twenty years (1981—2001)? In retrospect, do the eighties and nineties look relatively uneventful when compared to the noughties and the teenies? As the globe warms and our climate changes, is politics getting hotter too?

• Perhaps humanity is accelerating like never before? OR
• Perhaps it’s just that life seems to speed up as you get older? OR
• Perhaps we were just too young and not paying enough attention back then?

References

1. Anon (2002) New Euro banknotes and coins introduced in 12 countries, European Central Bank, Brussels
2. Alicia Awbrey and Natalie Sequeira (2001) Apple Presents iPod: Ultra-Portable MP3 Music Player Puts 1,000 Songs in Your Pocket, Apple Inc, Cupertino, California
3. Simon Bowers (2001) Google hits on profit formula, The Guardian, London