Featured Image Credit: Microsoft / Reddit
There are few more iconic tech-related images than the Windows XP default wallpaper, as it's almost idyllic rolling green hills will certainly be etched into the brains of anyone who used a computer in the early 2000s.
Known officially as the 'Bliss' wallpaper, it's up there with 'Hello, World!' when it comes to computer iconography, and it's hard to imagine an older Microsoft computer's desktop background without seeing the wonderfully green hills and blue cloudy sky.
Many are even shocked when they realize that it's an actual photograph of a real life location as opposed to some digitially altered image, as it looks almost too perfect to seem real.
Captured by Charles O'Rear in 1996 before being acquired by Microsoft for Windows XP a couple of years later, 'Bliss' is indeed of a real life hill in Sonoma County, California - although it definitely looks a bit different now.
As shared by 'insidehistory' on Instagram, it's staggering to see how different the exact same hill captured in 'Bliss' looks nearly three decades later, to the point where many are heartbroken to see the changes in action.
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While the original photo features a hill of grass and a luminescent blue sky, jumping less than 10 years later to 2006 you can see that the hill has been turned into farmland or an orchard, with dark green soil, burnt yellow leaves, and a depressingly gray sky.
Jumping all the way forward to 2020 things start to look a little more familiar, even just because the sky is finally blue again, although the smooth rolling nature of the hill back in 1996 is firmly replaced by short trees.
The same is true now as the hill remains almost unrecognisable, and notably far more 'normal' than O'Rear managed to capture it nearly 30 years ago.
It appears as if it was captured at the perfect moment back in 1996 though, as one comment points out that "it only very temporarily was just grass," adding that "it looked exactly like it does today in the early 90s too."
Others have taken a more pessimistic view towards the shifting landscape though, pointing out that the change is "tragic" and proceeds "to show what we have done to our world."
One comment even goes as far to suggest that "Microsoft should [have] bought it and kept it green," and that certainly would have made for a wonderful landmark that many would likely still visit to this day to get a healthy dose of nostalgia.
