Internet was ”nowhere” in 1990. Now it’s everywhere.
There was no big bang. Change was in a way quite slow - zoom in, track it on weekly or monthly basis and you likely missed it happening. There was also ups and downs, negative predictions, legal hurdles, dotcom bubble burst, companies came and died.
There was also very few (if any) obvious things Internet could improve immediately. Things like ecommerce revolution required many, many small steps.