Early internet felt more like a community. A few years ago, I came across a book that is on the same wavelength. It used to be that being connected meant you were in an alternate world from the rest of everyone; now it's kind of the opposite. Maybe it's my age, but there was a sense of shared exploration of the unknown that I don't feel anymore. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jess-kimball-leslie...
What I loved about the old internet is that private people had their little corners on the internet where they shared their excitement for whatever niche topics they were interested in.
It was a "hobby" and research internet, not a commercialized one. So many geocities and funpic blogs were so awesome because you randomly discovered new areas of research and interests.
People were sharing the URLs on post-it notes, I still have the first note from my uncle when he was super excited about the all new MIT OpenCourseWare, and we coordinated our downloads of those courses to save bandwidth.
All the file sharing communities were also more of "what do you want to learn", and that's why there were also chat rooms where people were asking about some niche book nobody had in stores anymore or that was too unpopular to be found.
Pretty much everything I know about electronics, computers, IT, development, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology etc I learned on the internet because at the time it was full of open research.
Now, 25 years later, it feels like we are being taught to be click monkeys that have to be kept dumb because if we would get too smart, nobody would make money off us.
It's the complete opposite :(