Dale Mineshima-Lowe
The Rise of the Internet, the End of the Cold War, and the ‘Rachel’ Hairdo
Dale Mineshima-Lowe | The Rise of the Internet, the End of the Cold War and the ‘Rachel’ Hairdo | 03.20.24
Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.
- Welcome, everyone, I’m going to get started. It’s three minutes past the hour. I know there’s still a few people joining us, and that’s fine. Welcome, everyone, I am Dale Mineshima-Lowe. And this evening, we’re going to attempt, yeah, we are going to cover the 1990s. So we’re looking at America in the 1990s. I’ve got some slides and images to share with you during this session. You can put some questions if you like and comments into the Q&A, and I will get to them at the end of the presentation. My plan is for about 45 minutes. So with 45 minutes, obviously trying to squeeze everything in a decade in 45 minutes is a big, tall order. I’ve picked a few things. There might be other things that you think, “Oh, why didn’t she cover?” Apologies in advance. I’m going to do my best to cover as much as I think are interesting. I’ve pulled some really interesting things, I think, for this session. We’re looking at social and economic history really of, and culture, of the 1990s in America. So let me share my screen and we’ll get started.
So that should be coming through for you. I believe. Yes, okay. So I’ve titled it “The Rise of the Internet, "The End of the Cold War, and the Rachel Hairdo.” I know quite conspicuous in terms of how they’re connected. But what I really would like to share with you today is really thinking about America in this last decade of the 20th Century. We see things and we’ll talk about population growth, we’ll talk about immigration, unemployment. And some really sort of demographic things that I think are really quite vital for kind of just contextualising what America looks like at the beginning of the 19, the last decade. So from 1990 going all the way to just before the turn of the century as well. Thinking about the economic boom, but also the fact that we know there was a slight recession as well. So just giving you a bit of an overview at the moment. Some key domestic events that I want to really talk about as well, because I think what we’re seeing is a real mixed picture with America in the 1990s. So my plan is to give you a bit of coverage in terms of some of the things you see on the slide here.
We’ll talk about the contract with America as well because I think that’s quite important. And kind of sets, resets some of the relationship perhaps domestically in what’s happening. And then the rise of the internet. And then I don’t want to end on a downer, so we’ll end on something fun, thinking about entertainment. So some of the top shows, television shows of the 1990s, but also some great movies that came out during that decade as well. Okay? So let us get started. So I wanted to start with a cartoon. Just you begin to see perhaps things that are developing the 1990s that we will start to see much more of in the 21st Century. And so one of the things that’s really quite interesting to me as a historian and political scientist, is the 1990s is often remembered as a decade of relative peace and prosperity. Now we’ll come back to that because that’s linked really to what we’re seeing in terms of the economy and development within the U.S. but also in terms of its relationship to the Cold War. So it’s often, as we said, remembered as a decade of relative peace and prosperity. However, it is also a decade that has tragedy and, one would say, violence happening domestically within the United States.
But also we know that things are happening internationally as well. You know, that’s a different lecture. I’m not talking about international and foreign relations in this session, but I thought it was just interesting to kind of contextualise that. That actually what we are seeing is there’s some really good news in terms of the 1990s, but also that there are really quite some problems that are starting to rise. We still have problems around race relations. And this will come through in terms of some of the domestic events that we talk about. But also we see here in this cartoon things about culture war, school prayer, shock jocks, Hollywood. What we’re beginning to see is in the decade of the 1990s is really an America that is trying to recreate or identify itself. It’s trying to figure out what its identity is. One could argue this is something that has happened every decade with regeneration in America, where it’s trying to redefine what it is to be American, and an American, and what America is. But I think what we’re starting to see in the 1990s are things are fundamentally that have been carried on from previous decades, but also what will carry on into the 21st Century in terms of things that we talk about in terms of identity politics, for instance as well. But we’ll get started with population.
So when we’re thinking about the population in the 1990s, two census reports comes out. So the census comes out every decade. So in 1990 we see census report of 248.7 million people in the U.S. that rises to 281.4 over that decade. And interestingly here, you can kind of see here, just the growth in millions. So, we’re looking at about just under 33 million people in terms of the population growth during this period. And as a percentage, a 13.2% rise. So we are talking about a significant but also perhaps one that jumps quite a bit from the previous decade. But not dissimilar or just slightly higher than what we see from even during the boom period of population which would be the 1950s. So it’s one way of thinking about where we’re going in terms of the population. It’s constantly growing in the U.S. And more to the point, what we’re starting to see is it’s growing rather sort of spectacularly across most of the U.S. as well. So hold this map because I thought it was just really useful way of thinking about population growth. ‘Cause population growth varied geographically, but you have large population increases in particular areas and little growth.
Or in the case of you see a sort of decline in population as well. And so those states that really gained in population we see here something of the order of 25% to 66.3%, which is quite fabulously big when you think about it. So at the top of the range, based on the sort of during this decade, 66% a state like Nevada for instance, we see really big growth. And that’s sort of an interesting one but also when we think about it, perhaps quite natural as well when you think about the entertainment industry. But also in terms of the developments that are happening across places like Vegas, within Nevada. And then at the other end of the population scale in terms of state growth, you have a state like North Dakota which had a not naught.5% growth, so much smaller in terms of that growth across the board. Now is sort of interesting because you notice that actually a good sway of the United States actually falls into this percentage of 0.02, 13.1. Actually for most of them, because actually across the country what we do know is that this decade is the only one in the 20th Century in which all states have gained a population. Even if it’s a very small population. As well. And so that’s something we’re starting to see.
But there is this differentiation in terms of geography. There’s another map and I should’ve shared it with you, but it comes down to counties. And it’s actually really quite fascinating when you start to look at where then it’s not just with all the urban centres, there is growth, quite a lot of growth in urban areas, but also that we’re seeing growth in the suburbs. And that will have a real impact in terms of things like poverty levels, that we’ll talk about in a bit. Now, just to kind of put it into much more context. So we’ve gone from states to major cities, major states. In terms of their rank of population growth as well during this decade. So California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, and Georgia were the top 10 states where you see the population is still growing. I know it’s a bit backwards 'cause they put 2000 here and then 1990 here. But you’ve got that growth that we can see across the board. Some of it smaller perhaps, but actually still growing quite significantly across the board during this decade. In numeric terms you can see the real growth here.
For instance, California, over four million people, that’s a 13.8% population growth for that state alone. And then even in somewhere like Georgia for instance, ranked 10th in the sort of population growth goes from nearly six and a half million to just over 8 million. You’ve got a 1.7 million growth, 26.4% population increase. And so that’s quite significant. We’re starting to see a lot of growth. But actually what we’re noticing is actually amongst the sort of the distribution of growth within the sort of top 10 populous states is really across the three sort of major, or the four major regions of the country anyways. You’ve got the Northeast, Midwest, South as well as the West. And so we’re seeing overall growth and across the board. Now I’m throwing different things in at different times following population because part of those population numbers are also related to immigration. And so I wanted to just pull this one here. When we think about immigration, we can also think about emigration. So not only those people that are coming into the country, which between 1991 and 2000 are around 9.1 million. You also have emigrants, people who are leaving the United States as well. And this is just over two and a quarter million.
And so we get this sort of net immigration when we think about the people coming in versus the people who are leaving. You then are left with sort of an immigration number of around 6.7 million during this decade. And you can just kind of see how it compares to the decades before it as well. So there is that sort of jump up in terms of immigration growth both in terms of immigrants coming into the country but also those who are planning to leave the country as well. Leave that for a second. So when we’re thinking about the U.S., we’re thinking population of growth, we’re thinking about immigration growth, but also one of the interesting things that I wanted to start to bring in is, is thinking about things like unemployment, median household incomes, which we’ll talk about in a moment, as well as then poverty levels that we’re seeing in the U.S. 'Cause I think these things sort of set the stage for understanding what’s happening socially within the country. So here you can see I’ve kind of bracketed off the 1990s, the sort of that one decade, but you can see how things move all the way up to 2022. Unemployment rate here, it’s not at a low but at a sort of not such a bad rate in terms of that. 5.6 in 1990. Going up into 1992 jumping to 7.5.
Now part of the reason for what we’re seeing is also due to the fact that actually in that early part of, or say, late part of the '80s going into the early '90s, we also see the U.S. is having a bit of a recession. And so that will have partial impact on sort of, well, have an impact on unemployment amongst other things as well. But yes, and then you see it really dropping down to 2000 here as well, below just at about 4% as well. So we see a steady decline over the 1990s in terms of unemployment. So one would argue this is a great thing for the U.S. in terms of what we’re seeing. We’re seeing more people sort of going into the workplace perhaps, but we also know that some of this will tend to be masking sort of geographical divergences and differences as well. So this is sort of the overall unemployment, but we know that in certain areas, kind of like when we talk about poverty levels, there will be differences, very strong differences between urban centres, suburbs, rural areas, in terms of unemployment rates. But also across different states and between different states and different regions of the country as well. Now I found this one, and I thought it was really interesting.
So I thought to share it with you. It’s giving real median household income by race and Hispanic origin. But one of the interesting things that I wanted to point out here was this grey area is where the recession is. So you can see early 1990, we’ve got a recession. But also in terms of median household incomes. In particular, the way in which they’re measured. I always take them with a bit of a pinch of salt but I wanted to share them with you 'cause I thought it was just quite interesting in the way in which they’re presenting it here. So this is 2022 inflation-adjusted dollars in terms of how they’ve rounded off the figures. But one of the things we’re sort of seeing and was quite interesting is the fact that we see a fairly stable rise out of most, there’s a slight dip in terms of Hispanic and any other race. And then there’s a rise again towards 2000 in terms of median household incomes. Now one of the challenges with the gathering of this kind of data is really in terms of how this term household is defined. Because what we know is in terms of things like property, households can be defined as single, can be defined in terms of say a four-person household. And then in some instances, the census will also use households in the terms of more than nine people. And so that has different connotations in terms of then when we’re taking a median, how this is being worked out as well. But it just sort of interesting to kind of think about actually what we’re looking at.
There is a fundamental rise of incomes, household incomes, across the board during the 1990s as well. Now one of the things that I thought was quite interesting, so the blue is here indicating when Clinton was in office. This one would obviously be George Bush senior. And then George Bush junior coming in, later in the 2000s. But what we’re noticing here from the 1990s, in particular going through to the end of the 1990s, is a real change in terms of federal deficit versus surplus. Now one of the things that we noted, in particular Clinton, but also with Congress and the Federal Reserve, really tried to implement a number of policies which were crucial in getting economic growth in the 1990s. Now we know during this period as well there was desires to create a sort of social healthcare system by Clinton which failed to be promoted, and also promoted a backlash across the country. Government as well in terms of Congress. But what we’re starting to see is that actually in particular there were changes that will occur we know in 1994 with Congress. Which will mean that for the change in the government. So that’s midterm elections.
Clinton comes into office with a majority both in the house and in the Senate. In the midterms in 1994, what we’ll see is a turning of that, which then will require both the president but also Congress to collaborate a lot more. And what we do see is really Clinton working with a congress. One that doesn’t necessarily agree with all of his policies. But a way of enacting a wide range of policies that will become important, and really impact the American economy positively. In the 1990s. For instance, you have tax rises, tax will be raised on high-income Americans and corporations. And so that will sort of start to build, if you like, pay off some of the federal deficit and will also help to create some of that surplus. Corporate income tax rates will be increased to 35% for firms in the top tax bracket. While income tax increased for the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers to a level of just under 40% as well. Now for those who live outside of the U.S., some of this level is not unheard of in terms of taxation as well. So it’s sort of interesting, but we start to begin to see it being used to to pay down the deficit and help the country revitalise itself and move forward as well. 'Cause without that deficit, it is also allowing it to invest, one could argue, in government, in other policies as well.
So we start to see things happening. Tax hikes on one hand helping to bring down the deficit. But also by the end of the 1990s, we see that the federal government had a budget surplus. Depending on how we count things as well. But the taxes that were raised helped, and sort of the tax burden was offset somewhat. So the federal government expands things like the earned income tax credit for low-income families. It also then expands child tax credit. And both of these efforts are really to sure up middle class incomes within the country as well. So taking from the sort of, if you like, the highest band and reallocating it or redeveloping it for use square as well becomes really important. During this period. Now I know I sort of led and mentioned about poverty levels. So this is just a distribution by age, population age in 1990 with that census data. So in 1990, the poverty level within the U.S. hit 33.6 million. So you’re talking about 13.5% of the nation’s population lived sort of, if you like, below or at the poverty line.
Now official poverty thresholds can be varied in terms of what they look like in 1990. So for instance, the official poverty threshold or the average poverty threshold I should say, for a family of four in 1990 was $13,359. And we see that for a single person that threshold was 6,652. But then for a family of nine or more members, you have a average poverty threshold of $26,848. So you can begin to see that actually there is an official poverty level, but actually it ranges dependent on if you’re claiming single family of four, family of nine plus. And that could have a real impact then on sort of, if you like, the number of persons that we’re finding in that official government poverty level as well. Now one of the things that we note from 1990, if you look at sort of the 15 to 19 and below. So this is the age brackets from zero to 19. You have some of the largest sort of, if you like, numbers of people and actually numbers of children or young adults below the poverty level. And it was one of the things that the census had started to pick up on. Now I should say one of the interesting things with the census is the U.S. has been trying to estimate poverty levels from as early on as it could.
But from the 1960s, it really started to take the first official poverty estimates within the country. And researchers and policymakers have continued to discuss what the best approach is to measure income and poverty in the U.S. Because they’re real differentiations. And dependent on how they’re measured will skew sort of the figures in one way or the other. And so it’s been a big challenge to try and sort of figure out and measure them. But one of the things they were really interested in measuring in particular were oops, were the under-18s. In terms of how many children and young people were living in poverty. And that’s something that they wanted to target in particular in terms of that as well. So we see that poverty rates, although it’s at 13.5% in 1990, that is significantly higher than the 12.8% that was existent a year before in 1989. And so we see that actually there’s a bit of more people going into or at least being classified as being in poverty during that turn of the decade. One of the other things the census data kind of talks about when it talks about poverty is in relation to education attainment of family households.
And again, you have this issue about how are they classifying family households. But for sort of simplistic purposes, what the census data did show is about 51.8% of the poorest family households of 25-year-old people and older, we found that 51.8% were high school graduates in 1990. So what we’re starting to see is the census data is trying to figure out whether some of the poverty levels are related to education attainment and whether both need to be tackled as policy areas as well in the future. And so when we’re thinking about what’s being seen, as we said, poverty rates decrease dramatically, the census tells us, as school completed by households increase. So for instance, 21.8% who had not completed high school then sort of, if you like, fall under the sort of poverty rates. 9.3% for those who had graduated from high school but not attended a college or university. And then 3.8% for those who had completed one or more years of college. So they may not have completed their full degrees but they finished some level of higher education studies during this period as well.
Now I think one of the interesting things when we think about poverty is that we know that there is uneven progress in the nation’s fight to reduce poverty. Despite the strong economic growth of the 1990s. And while overall there is, if you like, poverty is sort of slowly but surely sort of still increasing slightly during the 1989 to 1990 period, what the census data have also shown is actually between 1990 and 2000, there’s actually a decrease in the poverty level within the U.S. So it goes from 13.1% or 13.5% of the population in 1990 till 12.4%. Yes, in terms of that as well in 2000. So it’s modest good news one could argue but also it doesn’t take into account or it doesn’t actually give us a real sense of where that poverty is. In terms of, we know that it’s quite complex in terms of the trends across cities, but also in terms of the suburbs as well. Because one of the things that it is during that decade, there is an increase in poverty levels in the suburbs but there’s also an increase of population moving to the suburbs as well. And so there’s a few things and factors there that need to be teased out, one would argue as well.
Along with poverty levels that are very differentiated across the different regions of the country during this time. So some really interesting things I think as well that’s coming up. Now I’m going to move a bit quicker. The Cold War. So the end of the Cold War, and this is very brief because it’s more foreign policy, but I think it really hits to what’s happening in America and how Americans are perhaps perceiving this decade. As well as being one of peace. One of the reasons why it’s considered one of peace, we’ve already seen perhaps why it can be considered one of prosperity. One that’s peace is because you have the end of the Cold War. So we know that the Berlin wall falls and begins to tumble in 1989. By 1991, we start to see the real writing on the wall. And we see the changes attempting to be made internally within the Soviet Union. But we then also see by December 1991 that Gorbachev will essentially sign the Soviet Union out of existence. And what was the Soviet Union will then become part of Russia, but also the sort of, if you like, many of the Balkan countries and the Caucus countries as well. And so that everyone becomes independent, although how independent they are remains to be seen through the decade as well with its relationship to Russia. But that’s a different question.
For us in terms of the Cold War, the Cold War signifies perhaps for some the winning by America against the Soviet Union in terms of that bipolar world it had once lived in since the end of World War II. And what we begin to see as a real attitude. Both in terms of how the U.S. is projecting itself, but also how it is being perceived as a unipolar power globally. Which means it has dominance not just in terms of its military might, its political influence, but also in terms of its economics. And so it presents a very strong picture. But one of the interesting things is internally within the U.S., despite the end of the Cold War, there is still perhaps the sort of remains of, sort of built up from persisted ideas and assumptions around external threats. And so, what becomes much more apparent is the attempt by some, and this is across both parties, policymakers across both parties that believe that the United States, rather than using this period as a reset and developing international cooperation, what we’re starting to see is that actually the United States looks at itself and looks at all of the players globally, and thinks actually it can kind of act on its own imperative with minimal cost of risk.
Because there weren’t any other big superpowers at this point economically. But also militarily, now with the sort of disintegration of the Soviet Union. And so, that’s sort of the backdrop in terms of the development of the 1990s. But also this real idea that the U.S. is very, very powerful. And it is able to dictate, in a sense, things that are happening on a global level. For a number of people, there is this feeling that perhaps because of its new positioning globally, the U.S. should kind of push for more democracy. But also democracy that makes other states look like itself as well. And it holds its shared ideas and values. And so, that’s sort of where we’re going in the 1990s in terms of the Cold War. But it does then bring an era of peace. At least from external forces. What we begin to see is the more complex nature of America in the 1990s domestically. So, I pulled up just a few things here and I’m just going to briefly cover them. But I think some of the key domestic events that were seen within the U.S. are both a connection to previous decades but also those that are coming in the sort of future after the 21st Century as well. So start with the LA riots. And we think about this from 1991 to '92.
Now, the starting point isn’t just the Rodney King beatings, which is videoed, and then sort of shared on sort of, at that time, on mass media television. And discussed in large volumes across all media channels. The race riots in LA actually is a culmination of a number of years of rising tensions between the LAPD and the city’s African American communities as well. The sort of, if you like, the beating of the motorist Rodney King in 1991, in March 1991, after he led police on a high-speed car chase is sort of, if you like, a catalyst for pushing for more change. So what we see is in particular, now the beatings had been recorded, had been sort of, if you like, shared far and wide across major networks. Subsequently, Rodney King suffered from a fractured skull, cheekbone, et cetera. And the fact that it was done by police in terms of that. And within days, the footage of the police hitting him will create a nationwide outrage against the officers involved. Now the riots itself start to happen during this period, but also really culminate in 1992.
Partly on the basis of that the four officers go to trial, they’re found to not be guilty of assaulting King in April of 1992. And this leads to several days of widespread violence, and looting, and arson throughout LA. Culminating in sort of the National Guard being called out in the thousands in the first couple days of May of that year. Federal troops as well had largely curbed the uprising, but it left more than 60 people dead and produced about a billion dollars-worth of damage due to the looting going across the city and through other parts of the state as well. So that sort of, when we think about the LA riots, that’s one of the things that I think stuck in my mind from the 1990s. The Waco siege as well in 1990, well starts in early part of '93, and really ends dramatically in April of 1993. Here many of you will know. But if not, it sort of focuses around sort of a religious leader who believes he is the Messiah. But also, this is the sort of culmination of ideas about a particular religious, and then people call a religious cult. But also that there were people in there being held against their will.
There was also, I was going to say evidence, but also evidence and speculation about what was happening to those within the compound as well, as part of that sort of religious sect that were his followers. So one of the interesting, I think, things, but also one of the problematic things is we start to see differentiation in terms of how best to deal with the situation. In particular, as we said, the siege started in early of '93. By mid-April of '93, the siege had ended. Fires, that you can see here, consumed the compound. But it also left around 75 people dead, including 25 children. There were real discussions and sort of, if you like, divided notions about how best to go forward in terms of handling the siege. There were some who wanted to sort of quickly go in and sort of, if you like, hostage rescue-type style plans. But there were also those who were trying to negotiate delicately with the leader as well, leaders in terms of what would happen. And so we start to begin to see not only with the fire, but actually once they’d gone in, they’ve also found sort of, if you like, people who had either been sort of killed or had taken their lives rather than be seized by the FBI and the sort of the government, as well, agents involved in this incident.
Now the other big one I think for us in the early part of the 1990s is the Oklahoma City bombing. It left us, I was going to show a video, but we don’t have time. The bombing occurred when a truck packed with explosives detonated in the middle of April 1995 on a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It killed 168 people and left hundreds more injured. But the blast also was set off by an anti-government militant, Timothy McVeigh. Who was then found guilty, sentenced, and executed in 2001 for his crimes. His co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, was sentenced to life in prison. But this is sort of the aftermath of the bombing in the building in Oklahoma City in that year. Now perhaps less sort of, if you like, physical in this sense, but one that came up that I thought was worthy to include in the domestic events is the presidential impeachment of '98. Now we know that the House, which was controlled then by the Republicans, voted 228 to 206, largely along party lines, to impeach Clinton for perjury. But also then, abuse of power, as well. Now interestingly, when it reaches, obviously it goes from the House to the Senate. What we find in the Senate itself is that the allegations, the votes change slightly in terms of that as well.
So under Article one alleging perjury, the vote is defeated 45 to 55 against and an Article II charging with obstruction, this failed on a tie. 50/50, five Republicans joined all 45 Democrats in supporting for a full acquittal of the president for his allegations into his relationship with the intern Monica Lewinsky at the time as well. And then the last major incident I wanted to introduce everyone to that I think has a lasting impact from the 1990s going into the next decade, as well as the next century, is the Columbine shooting in 1999. Now this happened in mid-April, so April 20th, 1999. Columbine High School is located in Littleton, Colorado. And what we know of that day is two teens went on a bit of a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others before then turning the guns on themselves as well. Now at the time in 1999, the Columbine shooting was considered the worst high school shooting in U.S. history, and prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety.
Now since then in the last several decades, there have been a number of other school shootings. And it still raises the questions again about school safety, about gun control within the United States, and this hasn’t gone away. And so I think for us, there’s still a lot of unanswered things that need to be answered in terms of in the sort of aftermath of some of this here in this domestic events. But in particular with Columbine shooting. I know going over time, sorry everyone. Contract with America, now I chose this because it’s really, I think, significant for the 1990s. Because what happens when the Republicans take control of both the house and the Senate in '94 will have a dramatic impact on the domestic policymaking within the U.S. In particular, it’d been noted by a number of political scientists and historians that Clinton will announce himself in '96, I believe, that the era of big government is now over. And that was significant to Neut Gingrich who was the Speaker of the House. But also to others within the sort of Congress that actually here was a president who perhaps recognised that compromise was needed in order to make changes and move the country forward. Not just out of its sort of deficit but actually going forward to make the economy of America much stronger than it had been in the early '90s as well.
So number of their 10 key points. Really those two and talks about, if you like, this idea of balancing the budget, welfare reform, trying to provide some tax incentives, in particularly with the Family Reinforcement Act, tax incentives for adoption. The American Dream Restoration Act, a different form of tax sheltering for retirement accounts. And you have all the rest in terms of this as well, that it was trying to make changes to government policies that have been put in place. The last one in particular is very interesting. Citizens Legislature Act. 'Cause what it was calling for here was term limits for both representatives and senators, which did not get passed and still does not exist in the U.S. today as well. And so that’s sort of for us just some of the interesting things. But it had a big change over the way in which at least internal domestic policymaking is being played out within the U.S. during this decade. And not last but much less least, the rise of the internet. So we have Tim Berners-Lee, who brings this idea of the worldwide web to life in 1990. And then we begin to see things like Mosaic. Mosaic was the first internet browser to be created.
First, so sort of browser software that would be able to enable images and graphics to be used online. So what we begin to see with the internet and the rise of the internet in the 1990s quite rapidly is the fact that it not only connected people sort of for information, but actually it started to become much more once you have the added aspect of images and graphics being able to be transferred, and translated, and shared online, it’s just the beginning of what will kind of become much more innovative. And start to develop and build more from that. So when we think about the early '90s, you’ve got a number of users, but those users are networked together. And what we begin to see through the latter half of the '90s in particular is a real boom in terms of internet use. So by 1996, there’s approximately 45 million people using the internet. By 1999, you’ve got a worldwide internet users of about 150 million. More than half of those are in the U.S. and from the U.S. as well. And then by 2000. So you go from 45 to 150 to in year 2000, you’ve got over 407 million users worldwide of the internet. And it kind of begins to not only develop for itself but actually all the technologies that we think about today that are based around it.
Think about your mobile technology, et cetera. All of these things will become a major sort of, if you like, development out of this sort of closed network of computers and users at the very beginning of the '90s. And actually through the '60s and '70s as well. Now, one of the main factors that will lead to an increased internet use in the 1990s are really the new technologies that will allow the internet access without personal computers. So when we think about it, not everyone had computers and personal computers. But we begin to start to see things developing rather rapidly through the '90s, and into the 2000s, in particular. So things that we take for granted today, our smartphones, our tablets, all of these things are coming out of this sort of closed networks and the development of these networks throughout that period. And they’re also very much based on things like the .com bubbles. Now the reason why the .com bubble occurs, if you like, is the internet becomes such a big place for investment, but also for startups. You have so many startups and fledgling businesses coming into it. Now in terms of their profitability and their business models, there’s a lot of question marks by a lot of people. But that seemed to also be overlooked.
At some point during the '50s where people are kind of jumping on the bandwagon, going this is a really great thing, the internet and all of the things that it could potentially do in the future. And so what we see is the .com bubble really coincides with in a sense one of the longest sort of economic expansions overall of the U.S. In terms of its economic expansion. We saw as we said, unemployment declining, we see economic growth developing. And with that, you have these really innovative ideas. And these companies coming forward to say, hey, we could make these things. These things are related to the internet and the developing world of that technology sector and information technology and telecoms. And it’s also challenging the older sort of technologies that existed. So we’re starting to see some really interesting things with that. It obviously burst in 2000. I’m not going to sort of predate it.
But by the end of 2001, the most publicly-traded .com companies had failed. There’d been some successes, but they’ve also been, during that latter half of the '90s, almost over estimates about how much they were worth. But also overconfidence in them that they would develop something really great and so people were investing in them. And that would help to sort of, if you like, in a sense, inflate some of the confidence but also inflate their values over what would’ve been more traditional assessment factors that would’ve been used on companies as well. Last few things, TV shows, I know it might not be your favourites, apologies in advance. I just pulled some that I thought of were quite popular during the 1990s. I’ll come back to Friends in a moment. Sex and the City, Sopranos, Law & Order, Full House, ER, Home Improvement, X Files, Simpsons, Will & Grace, Roseanne. So I know these may not be your favourites, there might be others that you could mention as well as television shows from the 1990s.
Now one of the things I’d said at the beginning of my title was the Rachel-Do. It’s one of the things I remember. And one of the things that many people remember from the 1990s as well is Friends. It ran for 10 seasons, was one of the most popular, and highly-rated, and highly-paid television actors as well for per episode during that time. But the Rachel haircut then becomes synonymous with Friends, and kind of part of the '90s as well. And it’s not to say that in particular the haircut that Jennifer Aniston wears as her character Rachel Green, from the sort of the beginning and the onset of Friends as a television show is the first sort of hairdo. 'Cause you have people like say Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Meg Ryan. So '50s, '70s, '80s where they have hairdos that kind of, if you like, were seen as iconic as well, and imitated. But I think people kind of ran with the Rachel, and it became a bit of a thing as well.
Now the last thing, as I said I wanted to end with, 'cause I wanted a feel-good. Movies from the 1990s. I’ve clustered a whole bunch of different ones. Some that you might have seen, some that you might know. Ranging from Goodfellas, produced in 1990, Silence of the Lambs, Malcolm X, Shindler’s List, and Philadelphia in 1993. Pulp Fiction in '94, Toy Story in '95. And then Natural Born Killers also in '94. And then all the way to Saving Private Ryan in '98. And these are seen as just some of the movies that are quite, that drew people in to the cinema. But also quite challenging in various ways as well, I think. Across the decade. And so as I said, I didn’t want to leave you on a downer so I thought I would leave you with thoughts about movies and television shows from a decade that’s not actually that far away from us, and where we are today. But that’s me in a nutshell for the 1990s.
So thank you so much. I know there’s six minutes left 'cause I ran over, so apologies, everyone. I’m just going to pick up on a few messages and comments that are here.
Q&A and Comments
Q: So someone asked, is that legal or illegal immigration or both? A: In terms of the population and the chart that I was showing of immigration, it is legal immigration. It’s always much more challenging for them, for the census but also for the government to track accurately illegal immigration as well. So the figures that they normally throw in terms of inclusion within the census reports are residents, and sort of obviously resident citizens of the U.S. but also legal immigrants within the U.S. as well.
Q: Inflation to source economic figures, how much? A: It can do in terms of that. How much in that case, I’m trying to think if I came across that in very specifics. I’d have to look that back up again. It does, but also vague recollections 'cause I didn’t put it into the slide deck this time. Inflation was also if I believe after the immediate recession, and towards the ending of the '80s, early '90s, we start to see inflation if I believe decreasing. But I’d have to double check on that as well. But it can, in that sense it does distort economic figures as well.
Q: Where does the start of the 24/7 cable news cycle fit in? A: Oh, good question. I’m trying to think with CNN and because it starts with CNN. And it starts with Turner broadcasting. And I’m trying to think if it is at the end of the '80s or if it’s actually the very beginning of the 1990s. Or in the '90s as well. We begin to start to see, feeling it’s in the '90s, but it doesn’t come, I’m not sure what year, I’d have to check, but Turner begins to cycle the idea of developing the 24/7 news cycle. And that’s sort of the beginning of what we see. So Turner Broadcasting, Turner News, based in Atlanta, and then it sort of grows from that to what we sort of see today across the world in terms of this 24-hour cycle. Thank you.
Someone mentioned about Waco was preceded by Ruby Ridge in 1992 and this led to the rise of right-wing militias. Yes, you have what, tongue-tied, right-wing militias, but you also then have, some of them are related to and some of them are created and part of related to, or not really related to is not the right word, connected to, it’s more the word I want to use. To some of the religious cults that we also start to begin to see developing around the period as well. So yes.
Someone else said O.J. Simpson case trial and verdict '94, '95. Yes, and actually it was a big, big obsession in the middle of the 1990s, on the back of particular when we think about things that were happening with the Rodney King beatings and the trial, but also then the LA riots. Yes, in terms of that. Now one of the interesting things I didn’t mention about the trial of those police officers. So they couldn’t be tried, they weren’t tried in LA because obviously there was a feeling that they could not get a jury that would be unbiased and untouched by the incident. And by what was happening with the riots as well, or pre riots, with the race relation issues that were happening between the LAPD and the African American community, in particular in LA. So that trial was actually put in Simi Valley, which was hugely criticised at the time as well for being a sort of in a place where there is a huge majority of white Americans within the community. So the jury would not be as diverse as it could be or should be for the trial. Was one of the issues that had been raised with that one. But in terms of the O.J. Simpson case, I thought about including that as well 'cause there was so many things that I could include. So thank you for putting that in.
But yes, it did become a national obsession with watching live on the news and with the news helicopters tracking O.J. Simpson on the motorway as well, the freeway, and then being caught. But also then it really divided America in terms of what was found out about the trial and the sort of the murders, but also about O.J. Simpson himself in terms of that. Oh thank you! Someone put here, CNN did debut in the 1980s, in '80. Thank you so much, yes. And then, ooh. No, I didn’t mention the Twin Towers disasters. Probably because the big one is in 2001. I’m ending in the sort of 1990s. Because actually next week I will pick up on the 2000s, and we’ll talk about the 2000s, and see what’s happening. But thank you all so very much. I really appreciate all of you coming.
Thank you for the questions and the comments in the chat. As I said, I knew it was sort of challenging to do a decade in a 45-minute, 50-minute lecture talk, so I did my best. There are obviously things that you thought of that you think she should have done. And yes, there are things I thought when I was putting together, how much can I squeeze into this without talking forever at you. So I thank you very much for joining me. Have a very good day, evening wherever you are. And I hope to see you in another talk soon as well. Thank you, everyone.