[michaelt]

There was a time when if you wanted to know a phone number you had to manually consult a huge book, if you wanted to share a photo with family you had to manually carry the print to them, if you wanted to watch a movie at home you had to drive to blockbuster, and if you wanted to hurl abuse at a politician you had to wait for them to hold a rally in your city and queue for hours to get a front row seat.

Now I can find phone numbers, share photos with family, watch movies on demand and hurl abuse at politicians, all without leaving my chair.

[rightbyte]

Online phone books are not as complete. People lose their digital photos. Blockbuster had better stock of films than Netflix has now. Politicians don't read pleb Twitter accounts.

[falcor84]

You lost me at "Blockbuster had better stock of films than Netflix has now". While "better" is debatable, my watch list of films I want to watch on Netflix will most likely outlive me

[rightbyte]

Obviously the 90s movie rental place had no movies made after the 90s.

A movie rental place had more or less all blockbusters (pun intended) and a huge stack of old movies. Netflix today, not the old postal order Netflix, has nowhere near the assortment of a kinda crappy movie rental place of the late 90s.