I suspect that they were much more locally focused. Writing letters to the editor (because people still read the paper), aligning with community social organizations, being more actively involved in their communities.
So now we're able to form narrowcast tribes across geographic (and even temporal) boundaries. Are we better off? En masse, such connections may leave whole societies better off (Arab spring) but I think that perhaps we won't realize the full benefits until the focus returns to the local. And that won't happen until there's a rise in the locality of the internet.
Think reinvention of the local paper; or maybe a craigslist for the issues of the day.
And that can't happen until the technology is in the hands and power of EVERYONE. Think Kindles (or iPads, or whatever) in a rack at your McDonalds, literally replacing the local paper. Perhaps the biggest advancement here is the price point; but we need to cut that iPad cost in half perhaps 5-8 more times for this access to happen.
When that day hits--the day of the ubiquitous $1 Kindle--then I think we can claim democratization, and we will see a return to locality and the strengthening of our communities.
There is an assumption here that people with a PC will automatically become producers which I think is wrong. For people to become producers they need incentive and opportunity. These devices and the ease of content creation is means the opportunity bar is much lower (e.g. you don't need to get a publisher to agree on a manuscript to publish); and the incentive is higher (you can monetize content you produce whether its apps, books or videos much more easily).
What is missing here is actually a perspective on how consumption is a form of production itself– of perspective. Better access, and new forms and content for consumption, will create (that word!) new forms of consciousness, which are fed back in production.
Consumption today seem to me more of a form of networking of sources and producers, production of perspective. There's so little that we yet know about our still new internet reality. Polishing consumption may very well be necessary in order for us to make sense of our current social/technological stage, to produce new forms of social networking/organization and ultimately new every-other-form of content/artifacts.
To dive in at the deep end: consuming stuff on a tablet, with the accompanying delights and frustrations - is part of the networking of the device itself into the cycle of human content consumption-production. There's no reason to believe that the tablet as an object is finished, and that it won't evolve to fit the 'expressive needs' of people – your own frustration/pessimism are a part of this cycle, both leading people to not use tablets, to look for different desktop paradigms, new forms of interaction with tablets, improving tablet ergonomics and on and on. You're surely not alone.
The cycle won't stop. We must not get down when there's so much great work to be done! Yet, again, also our negative feeling in this regard is ultimately productive, if we let it.
I guess the way it looks to me is that the last dramatic production advancement for lay people was the advent of blogging. The two major advancements after that have been social networking and tablets, which both somewhat degrade production signal.
The observation that an optimized consumption experience gives producers a bigger audience is an interesting one. But I think what I'm objecting to is the further distinction between those classes. The PC and blogging revolutions were profound to me in that they closed the gap between the producers and consumers. Tablets, on the other hand, make the distinction more overt. Same with the Kindle.
You cannot have better and better consumption oriented devices in a vacuum. Someone has to produce what the masses are consuming.
While this is true, my point is about who has the means for production. I would rather see that power distributed than concentrated.