The '90s was all about secrets. Cyberpunk. Hacking. Techno. Paranoia. The work that best sums up the '90s is a historical fantasy, "The Matrix". In the Matrix films, dark glasses are a running theme. They are artifacts that stand between the characters and their world, they block communication, hide identity.
It was, all in all, a bit of a drab decade. Lots of strange stuff happened, but there was no ideological fire to it. There's no clean transition between decades. The '90s still have a little life left in them, but the '00s definitely now have the '90s surrounded on all sides. The '90s will be officially over late next year.
What the '00s are going to be all about is still unclear, but there's a sort of feeling for it now. Maybe it's going to look something like Bruce Sterling's "Schismatrix". Cheap, messy and biological. One thing is certain: it's going to be a lot more open. Like tinted sunglasses, there's going to be a lot more communication, communication that is framed, mediated and colored by our machinery. The Matrix ends with Neo going Wi-Fi.
