Nostalgic yeah, but that doesn't mean very much... After all, those discovering the web today will feel nostalgia for the current version in N years.
As exciting as those days were, I wouldn't want to go back to dial-up, CRT monitors, no-broadband, no-wi-fi, no-wikipedia, no-dropbox, no-stackoverflow, no-git, no-digital-distribution, etc.
No spam. No tracking. No monetization. No clickbait.* No Zuckerberg. No profiling. No selling surfing habits. No social credit score. No tying insurance rates to activity monitors. No bosses firing people for expressing their personal opinions on private time. No HR minions making hiring decisions based on personal web spaces.
And yes there was broadband in the old days. It just wasn't widely distributed. It was mostly at businesses and universities. As broadband became more common, web sites got needlessly heavier.
On the plus side, future generations will never know the horrors of a RealPlayer "Buffering..." message.
"As broadband became more common, web sites got needlessly heavier."
100% this. About 8 years ago, I had LIGHTNING fast loading times on every page I visited. 800-1000ms was average, on a connection that is slower than mine is today... Now 4-8 seconds is average, and the new Gmail takes 10-12 seconds to load.
I'm nostalgic for the days when the web was faster and more functional than it is today.
As exciting as those days were, I wouldn't want to go back to dial-up, CRT monitors, no-broadband, no-wi-fi, no-wikipedia, no-dropbox, no-stackoverflow, no-git, no-digital-distribution, etc.