Isn't it crazy that Wikipedia launched not before 2001? (And wasn't relevant till 2003.) It is so ingrained in my Web habits that I have the feeling it existed already in the 90s.
You hit the nail on the head! I thought of some other things that would have floored me 10-15 years ago.
* Ask yourself what you used to search before Google? In fact, remember Web Rings?
* How did you share pictures before Facebook, Myspace, or Flickr?
* How about the holy grail of watching videos online before Youtube (Otherwise known as the dark ages of Real Player)?
* Remember when you had to print out Mapquest directions to somebody's house? God forbid you missed a turn! When was the last time you consulted a paper map other than for fun?
* How did you deal with the mountains of spam before Gmail, or any other industrial strength spam filter?
* How about getting the internet on your cell phone?
* When was the last time you had to pay for WiFi? Granted there are some holdouts, like airports, but WiFi is practically everywhere. If you can get into a Starbucks you have access, for free, to the internet.
* How about downloading a 10mb file in less than an hour? God help you if the connection was interrupted...
The things we do today are astounding in both the scope of their capabilities and how much we take them for granted.
I actually remember the first time I used Wikipedia, in '02 or '03, while researching pyrethrum insecticide in high school. It was such a qualitative improvement over other centralized resources; I wondered how I ever got by without it. Same way I felt when I found Google a few years earlier, and when I got an iPhone a few years later.
