I certainly remember the culture clash when AOL opened the Internet to "newbies," starting with Usenet and then everything else. I think part of it was just that being able to connect no longer made you part of a special club.
I was one of those newbies. When my spouse and I were living in different towns after grad school, AOL allowed us to communicate using local phone numbers in our respective locations, using a single account. Later on, they reconfigured their software so that it was running on top of a regular TCP/IP client, and you'd use it by logging in with the AOL software and then switching over to Netscape and an e-mail program that recognized AOL's protocol.
I ran my first side business from an AOL e-mail address.
AOL was the closest thing to "it just works" in the business for quite a while. Plus, their nationwide reach meant that you could access it anywhere without paying for long distance phone service. It took a few more years for the Internet to work that well for everybody.
I predicted to my friends that pretty soon everybody would have access to the Internet! Today we look back on the early Internet with nostalgia.
