The rest is just saudosistic nostalgia. There wasn't mass access to the internet, you're just missing the times when a small elite had access to the internet.
Consumers are far better now than they were.
The interest wasn't massive because things were not super easy. Phones bridged the gap. Fast forward to today you have less choice but bigger buy buttons.
You seem to have a mental image of the internet that doesn't correspond to reality. Poor didn't have access, they couldn't afford a computer, much less an internet plan.
Step out of the Hacker News bubble for a bit.
I was very, very poor. So were most of the kids I grew up with. Most of us couldn't afford new computers; that's true. So we bought old ones. My father - tears in his eyes - lugged in something ancient that he'd picked up for $50, having no idea how to use it but hoping that putting it in front me would do me some good. AOL had been mailing everyone in town (Detroit). Some kids got PCs from the nearby churches, some got them from the school (others still only ever used them in school). We collected and hoarded the access disks, and would go ringing each others' phones or knocking down doors to share websites we'd found. Imagine my embarrassment when I realized the AOL search results page was not the entire internet, and that I could click on any text with a blue outline.
> doesn't correspond to reality
I know there are people who managed (or didn't..) to grow up poorer than I did. But even poverty is a spectrum.
The "very poor" in the US are rich in most of the developing world.
If that doesn't qualify it as a product only available to the elites, I don't know what will...
Heck, in 2000, just under 30% of the global population had access to properly built sanitation services.
And about 28% of the global population live with under a $1 (in PPP) per day.
Respectfully, I think you are lacking some context about life in other countries.
I’m not though, and I have already said so. My original “poverty is a spectrum” comment still firmly addresses everything you’ve said, so if we still disagree, we can agree that’s ok.
You’re also factually incorrect about “a small elite had access to the internet”. That may have been true in the 80s, but by 2000 usage was at 50% and climbed to 75% by 2010. I mean the dot com boom was predicated on wide user adoption, so I don’t even know why you would even think that stat made inuitive sense.
No, it isn't false. Buying and/or installing an app today is orders of magnitude easier, safer and cheaper than 2005.
You clearly don't like it, and you probably are part of the little elite that had access to the internet before the general public did.
You can still do online everything that you used to in 2005, nothing was removed.
> That may have been true in the 80s, but by 2000 usage was at 50% and climbed to 75% by 2010.
Sorry the break the news to you, but the US isn't the world.
Maybe you should step out of the hacker news bubble for a minute.