Slate has a great post on the internet of 1996 today. I fondly remember 1996 as it was the year I started surfing the wide web world, not world wide web. If I remember correctly, in contradiction to what Slate says, you surfed for hours. You never knew where the next hyperlink would take you or how far you end up from where you started. If I remember correctly, you'd spend your time building your own web pages or learning how to by inspecting the source of other pages. You also spent your time building link exchanges. If you were accepted as a link on someone elses directory, it was so exciting to see your pages or site for others to surf on. It was great!