That's funny. To me (mid-40s), the "glory days" of the internet were pre-iPhone, around 1997-2005 or so. Sure, speeds were lower, but that was ok for the time. And sure, everyone didn't have always-on internet access wherever they were, but I think that was mostly a good thing.
I expect if we were to ask a 50 or 60 year old when the internet's glory days were, they'd go even farther back in time.
Indeed. Early to mid 1990's, that's where it was at. FTP, telnet, gopher were awesome, and then, in short order: HTML, Mosaic, Netscape - the WWW. Really useful.
Then AOL etc. offered cheap dial-up, and suddenly you had all those noobs online ("Eternal September"). Been going downhill since then ;-)
I expect if we were to ask a 50 or 60 year old when the internet's glory days were, they'd go even farther back in time.