Being able to place local anonymous calls without being identified, tracked or recorded.
Being able to wander around outside with nobody knowing where we were, or having any expectation of being able to telephone us.
Having the skill to navigate, meet people, and even split up and re-meet people, without a GPS device or cell phone, because people could use maps and be responsible for meeting at certain places and times without them, without getting lost, and without panicking because “oh no we don’t have a smart phone”.
Being able to do research without a computer.
Having the expectation of not being surveiled and recorded by cameras in most public places.
Feeling like people in media and government at least made some effort to try to seem to be well-meaning adults capable of intelligent rational thought, speech and discourse, rather than lying scumbags and airheads asserting nonsense and never getting called out on it.
I remember, in the early computer age before Internet:
* There were good manuals and books for computers, hardware and software, that explained things in detail.
* Error messages could be looked up for explanations and what to do about them, in books.
* There were almost no &^#@ updates, and no mandatory ones done automatically.
* There was no question that a computer owner owned their machine and the data on it and controlled what it did and didn’t do.
* Software could be written and published by a single independent person, and sold commercially, without being in competition with multi-million-dollar software corporate projects.
* You could entertain people with computer games with simple graphics or even text, and they’d be excited to engage them using their imaginations instead of demanding photo-realistic 3D graphics.
* You could buy a new automobile for a few thousand dollars.
* Health insurance wasn’t an unaffordable joke for people who don’t work for a large organization.