If you have been on the Internet over the past few years, you have undoubtedly noticed that a few changes have taken place since it first came about. For one thing, the lack of dialup connections mean that you no longer have to endure annoying sound effects, just to encounter busy signals and get kicked off the line. For another thing, there is a whole lot more room for the individual person online to do their own thing than there used to be. And for still another difference which has come about very recently, the online world has a whole lot to offer.
It used to be that getting online (not to mention actually staying online) was almost an art form. If you timed it just right, getting online was not a big deal. And if you used a separate phone line from the one that you usually used, you would be fairly unlikely to get calls on it (except from telemarketers). Of course, you still had to contend a lot with the unbearably slow speeds (which were evident even back in those days) that were the norm. Those are some components of the online world that nobody misses.
Of course, the nature of the Internet’s makeup has also changed a great deal. Nobody was blogging until just a few years ago, and now everybody is. Back during the age of dialup, there was actually a sort of “you’re a nerd” stigma which was associated with having your own website, and thus your own voice online. If you did back in those days, you would generally just keep that out of what you told people in the real world (at least mundanes, who could never understand anyway). For a lot of people, the urge to speak their peace through the net has come up to lots of love from the people who need to vent.