> In the 1990s and 2000s, the internet was a deeply physical thing, a location. One “arrived” at the internet with purpose and intention. It was an embodied experience.

As much as I think Google, Facebook etc... should be removed - that view shown in the article is also strange. It assumes that we all had "intentions", all of the time; and now that we don't have those intentions. That's not true.

For instance, searching for news was always one big thing with the old internet too. How old is the BBC website? I am sure it is old. Same with many other websites.

I remember when Wikipedia was founded in 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia

That is not necessarily the "old" internet as I would call it, since I refer there more to the 1990s, but still it was at the tail-end. Clearly people had a requirement or need to find articles and read up on staff, already before 2001. But you did not always necessarily have "intentions" all the time. Browser games were quite popular in the late 1990s. Also Java Applet games too. And of course commerce as well, though possibly not as convenient as amazon initially was (before succumbing to the prime slop). Amazon was launched in 1995.

Today's internet has various problems, largely created by, say, youtube owned by Google trying to get people "connected" on the platform 24/7. But we should not have nostalgia kick in too much when looking back at the old internet. There was no "embodied experience" - I would not even know what that should be. It may have been slower but you had broadband connection in the 1990s too, as I had that. I never used model dial-up (though, perhaps very early on ... but for the most part no, just broadband).