Email was nice, back when it consisted of nothing but emails from people you knew. And the occasional spam that could be knocked out by simple keyword filters.
Usenet was nice. Even with that dial-up netzero account you had access to a HN-esque level of intelligent discourse on pretty much every subject imaginable. Now we only get that with tech.
But back then you had essentially a HackerNews for rock climbing, one for chess, one for rocket science (with real rocket scientests there who would answer your questions), and ones for discussing whether an imperial star destroyer would win in a fight with the USS Enterprise.
But then Spam happened and it killed both those things. The Usenet went away in the span of a single year, to be only fractionally replaced with a series of terrible PHPBB boards that nobody could find and you certainly weren't about to meet any real rocket scientests hanging out in.
Not sure I'd trade my iPad to get all that back, but it was still pretty nice.