I've been "online" since 1993, when 9,600bps was fast and a 17" CRT was considered the big time.  The idea of a text-driven BBS being hip was vanquisted forever with the advent of Mosaic, the first real web browser.  It changed the business world as much as any invention since, perhaps, the cotton gin.

The internet at that time was a small community of largely academic and governmental types in those days--generally smart, focused people who were just trying to "network" to solve problems by sharing information.  The internet obviously morphed into a huge social, commercial, and informational media platform--but I, for one, enjoyed it more back in the early days.

The reason, you ask, that I prefered low baud rates and an inability to check the weather or movie times to the dynamo that is the web these days?  That's simple, really--it is the people.  Uneducated, idiotic masses have ruined the internet.  

There used to be much less "discussion" on the internet, and though I'm a fan of discourse as much as the next academic, I'm not a fan of plain and simple stupidity.  Sadly, this seems to be the norm, even on the feedback forums of reputable websites like economist.com.  Everything ends up being partisan, argumentative, etc. 

Online discussion forums like Craigslist have also devolved to the point of being nearly useless, largely because kids and buffoons have nothing better to do than to create and maintain ongoing "wars" with one another.

Online dating used to be rare, but the people who did it were smart, reasonably affluent, and at least somewhat intelligent.  Now, match.com seems like a West Allis bowling alley in terms of the clientele. The "lemme ax u a ?" speak does nothing for me, I'm sorry.

It is a shame that "democracy" of the internet has essentially led to the demise of it as a useful, practical research and educational tool.  I suppose that the same could be said of television, the original aspirations for which were quite lofty when compared to "The Jerry Springer Show" or "Jon & Kate Plug Eight" train wrecks we can witness 24/7 today.  

I love Google and adore Wolfram Alpha for doing sophisticated comparative analysis, but what the web really needs isn't a "search" engine, it needs a "hide" engine that automatically searches for stupid, unnecessary content, banner ads, and allows me to completely customize my web experience to *not* include anything I choose to void--Mr. Lucky's blogs, anything in the JS by Eugene Kane, all Michael Jackson funeral coverage, Palin resignation scuttlebut, Favre news, etc.  

Here's hoping that some bright engineers are out there working on this, because I would gladly pay at least as much as I pay Time Warner to any customizable filtering methodology that worked as advertised...and I'm definitely not alone.