"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the FAX machine's."

- Paul Krugman, Leftist genius and Nobel Prize-winning "economist," 1998.

People were using the Internet a lot by 1996 (although we were using a dial up connection) which is why most of these predictions have proved substantially correct.

A dial up connection meant downloading a low definition 2 minute video was an exercise in endurance.

The Internet was however much the same as now except there was more competition in search engines, browsers and video sites. Mostly though, it was just slower. Much slower.

#3 *Ann Landers

I first experience the BBS system through a dial up a friend had. Pure and utter boredom. Even looking at a single image took seemingly forever and of course they were usually the most dismal of quality at first. That was all prior to Windows 95. Most people I knew at the time were still using Dos commands. 89-99 were really the golden years of the internet before all the regulations.

I hated when my server would crash just when cybersex got heavy..

I was one of the first in the military to use the early computers