I can still remember the first time I heard about the "world wide web". It was 1993, I had just started college, and had applied for some job. I remember them saying "We are even on the World Wide Web" and even though I had a long history with bulletin boards and at that time was using GEnie a lot, I had no clue what she was talking about. It would be probably another few years before it ever came up again, after I was out of college.
I was one of those that also came from AOL once the internet really started to take off. To me it just seemed like a much more diverse AOL, although to be honest I can't really remember my first time using it or exactly what I thought. AOL to me meant people picking up phones and screwing up my Air Warrior game. It meant talking to a random girl in a chat room one day, whom ended up a no string attached sex friend for years and whom I am still friends with today. The internet was much less standardized, and much more wild west.
I do remember feeling like there was so much information out there, and at that point it was probably 2% of what it is now.
People my age (39-40), are probably the youngest group of people that will ever know what life was like before the Internet (in the US at least). We still grew up mainly without computers, where games involved quarters, and Atari 2400 was our first console. Bulletin boards were basically our internet, but for most of us it didn't consume us nearly as much as computers do today. Most of our time was still spent outside and in non-digital environments.
I have two young children, and it's weird to think how much exposure to content they currently and will have. As a lifelong gamer, I am a bit restrictive with my kids with games at this point. If he could I know they would play for hours each day, and I honestly don't want that. I want them to have a life away and outside computers, because I also have been a software engineer for 18 years. So my life has been around computers basically since they first became home machines (Commodore 64) until now. It's not what I grew up dreaming about though, and while I do enjoy the monetary rewards it has earned me I know it's had somewhat of a price on my soul.
So yea, I didn't know what the internet was at first, and years later finally realized. And now? I think it's a great tool, when verified and used in moderation.