As 2025 comes to an end, I find myself looking back.

The world has changed so quickly. If I had to pick a time when I truly felt 'happy' in my memories, it would be from around 1999 to 2009.

That exact decade. The internet was starting to change the world, but there was still a sense of humanity in the air.

Everything felt new and exciting back then. The days of connecting a modem at home and hearing the 'beep' sound while getting online made me feel like I owned the world. It took several seconds for a webpage to load, but even that wait was thrilling, and receiving an email felt like getting a letter. Then, when cable internet came along, the world felt like a truly new place. I was amazed by the faster image download speeds and imagined when streaming high-quality videos on computers would become possible.

It was also the time when smartphones were just emerging. There were social media platforms, but they didn't exhaust people like they do now. When I posted music and photos on my Cyworld mini homepage, friends would leave messages in my guestbook and buy acorns to gift each other, and that was an event.

I didn't care about the number of likes; just saying 'today was fun' was enough. I didn't waste time getting addicted to video shorts like people do these days.

People still met offline. We laughed and chatted over drinks, and later developed photos to put in albums. Gatherings back then were nice because they had no purpose. It was simply a time when we met because we liked each other.

These days, there is so much information that it feels exhausting. I automatically know things I don't want to know, and the daily lives of people I don't care about pop up in front of me. Back then, there was so much I didn't know, but that made me feel more at ease.

The internet connected the world, but at the same time, it has made the distance between people greater than ever. In those days, online was a 'gateway to the world,' but now it sometimes feels like a 'prison from the world.'

In the end, technology has advanced, but happiness seems to have gone in reverse. Back then, things were small and slow but warm, while now they are fast and convenient but feel empty.

I miss the sound of modems and the laughter of friends from that time. From the late 1990s to 2009, that period was probably the golden age of my life. Was the world, the people, and myself warmer back then, or is it just my own thought?