There was a sense of... Anticipation? When we first got internet in my family.
The dial up tone was an announcement that you were going on the internet. It was a mindful choice you made, and you had to wait a bit for it. Not just pick up your phone and look at it. You had something in mind that you wanted to do.
It did always have a slight sense of occasion and I remember having butterflies just waiting for the connection. I'm very nostalgic for it.
I suppose the last one is halfway true. In the UK before internet access was mainstream, you either had to use the school/work network connection and their weird access control packages, or use the local library. In any case, you actually had to get dressed to use the internet.
This was when ISDN was a fat pipe, and if you went to the library, had to plan what you was going to look up because you paid for 30mins of access time. After you'd searched for PS1 cheat codes, Ask(ed) Jeeves for a fact to settle an argument, and looked up pictures of the 555-branded Subaru Impreza, it was time to burn off whatever acces time was left on Lycos, Excite, or Google's directory service to find new cool stuff.
Sometimes I thought I'd seen everything new online, that day. Sit there spinning my wheels trying to think of any webcomic, game site, or forum I hadn't refreshed.
