Dial-up nostalgia

BusinessWeek's technology writer, Om Malik, keeps a mean businesstech blog over at GigaOM. Yesterday, he noted that broadband has clearly surpassed dial-up as the primary way people access today's information superhighway. (Makes me curious as to who are those 10-million-odd people still using AOL?) Om reminesced about the days when the Web wasn't always on:
"More than anything, dial-up made going on the net a proactive act, unlike today when we live in a bit-bubble. The upside of dial-up, if you can call that an upside, was that the Internet Life didn’t feel so overwhelming. As an Internet user, the very act of dialing up put you in charge. People didn’t spend as much time on the net, and didn’t send so much email that Fred Wilson had to declare e-mail bankruptcy.

Ah the golden era of the Senior Slowskies — when email was on demand, instead of showing up every few seconds, becoming more annoying than an annoying mother-in-law. Or when IM meant I wanted to be messaged, and not instant migraine. The good old slow days, when Yahoo paid attention to the minimalism and crafted a lite-site. The golden days when YouTube viewing didn’t come between me and productivity."