Indeed, the amount and types of published information hasn't broadly changed, what has changed is the information horizon; the ability to search for information and analyse it. The world hasn't become smaller, our ability to see is much much wider. The information horizon is much further away from zero than it used to be (thanks to the computer's / big data's ability to communicate and analyse), and it's impact on society is much more than just privacy.

This reminds me of the decision on GPS trackers on cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012)

Dreeben cited United States v. Knotts as an example where police were allowed to use a device known as a "beeper" that allows the tracking of a car from a short distance away. Chief Justice Roberts distinguished the current case from Knotts, saying that using a beeper still took "a lot of work" whereas a GPS device allows the police to "sit back in the station ... and push a button whenever they want to find out where the car is."

i once worked on a project (about 15 years ago) where we had access to a reverse phone book listing that was generated in part by having a copy of every distinct paper phonebook in the US (also things like school directories) sent overseas to be hand entered (2-3 times for QC). A "nice" feature of it was that the address info was also geocoded so we could answer questions like "Who are my closest 100 neighbors and what are their home phone numbers?". Between that and Google buying the archives of usenet[1] in the same basic timeframe I realized that if it's written down its not likely to stay private for long.

Edit: add citation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups#Deja_News