I remember the early days of instant messaging where people would just jump in a chatroom and ask where others were from, then sit there in awe. "HONEY, I'm talking to someone from Ireland! HONEY! Come look!"
I was on usenet in the 90s. It was WILD. I remember trying to explain it to my mom, and she just didn’t quite grasp it. When I told her I was talking to someone from Germany, she asked if she was gonna have to pay for that, because it was long distance. Bless her heart.
I saw "Blackberry" yesterday and it was a really good experience putting you in the context of those times.
There is one scene where they type a message and wait for it to show up on another device. After a few seconds, it is there and every engineer in the room celebrates.
Then, management/sales guy comes in and they tell about what they've just done. He goes yeah, nice, but we do it already, it's called SMS.
The engineers then say that he is not getting the point. It was a message sent through the network using data, 0 dollars and all and salesman's eye get brighter.