Internet had steady growth and usefulness through 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, but did not really take off until Web idea invented. As late as 1992, the Internet was being ignored by Microsoft, IBM and the rest of the computer industry. But every computer science undergraduate lab in the world was full of people glued to it. Life before the Web Many archives existed on the Internet before the Web. There is no easy way of bookmarking or linking to these sites.
People have to build and maintain their own lists of sites and passwords.
Typing or Pasting all this in every time was VERY tedious. Plain format, showing list of filenames. Little or no idea what is in these files. You have to read it offline and then find what you are interested in - say a collection of Shakespeare plays. Shakespeare Go into a sub-category.