ALL of them are older than me

Pardon me, but isn't Internet a more recent invention?

Only 3 of them are older than me, but only by a few months. Wow, I didn't even know the internet existed then.

Lot of government contractors on that list. ;)

Sheesh--silly youngun'. Internet been around a LONG time, but it was slower back then. Uphill. Both ways. In 6 feet of snow. Year round.

Now shut up and go get my spectacles!

Maybe he meant the web. Lots of people say internet and think web. Lots of people never heard of gopher, and what is the last time you fingered or talk-ed someone on a terminal, used kermit or uucp-d a file? Well, what about uuencode-ing binary, so it can be sliced, sent in parts, and pasted back together and uudecoded? Or just talk about ftp, most web users never use ftp any longer.
Maybe the web was slower (10 kbps) but the files were smaller too. I have installed windows from floppy disks. My game library was on three 1.4 MB floppies. That did not need that much speed to upload. Forums were more difficult to implement, but they were there: the trilla system for example to share files, send messages, and work on forums with threads. (all this without web)
Since files were far smaller, the 100 times larger speed these days (well, 100 times if you have a T1 line) will things seem to be slower, because the file sizes got more than 100 times larger.

I still use FTP for quite a few things. Mostly website related, or intranet issues.

The increase in file sizes is remarkable--and in some remote areas, not a good thing. Lots of places are still running on copper wire! Attachments can be a bugger to manage on email systems where some users are on a T1 and some on copper.