"The Digital System Has Interfered with Our Very Sense of Culture-Time"

"When people—fans, critics, industry, whoever—look back to grunge, then, what they feel wistful for is not just the particulars of that moment (flannel, shaggy hair, down-tuned guitar sounds, Tabitha Soren) or even qualities that music seemed to have then and since lost (anger, rebellion, spontaneity, anti-gloss realness, etc). It is for the concept of period vibe in itself, for 'aura of era' in the abstract. It is a nostalgia for a time when the Zeit actually possessed a Geist."

Simon Reynolds in Slate discusses 1990s nostalgia and the rise of the Internet.