No. The 90s' and early 2000s' web were dystopian. It was a corporate-controlled environment, in which the users did not get as much as a comment form under the news and articles of 'illustrous' corporate authors publishing on corporate websites that dominated the content. Who are you, as a lowly commoner, to be able to drop your opinion under a news piece or a columnist's article anyway. Your job was to shut up and consume what you were given. And maybe babble with other users on the fringes of the web in forums and communities. Things like what you are doing now - writing on a major outlet where thousands of people can read what you write every day - was unimaginable for 'nobodies' who didn't have the 'right background', 'right connections' and the 'right job'.

No. With all its advertising and chaos, today's web is much more what it was meant to be. Rather than the corporate trumpet it was back then.