I do miss the mad west of the IRC/NNTP days. I also miss multiple search engines. Yahoo/Lycos/Hotbot/Dogpile/AltaVista all give you different results and you could have fun searching around.
NNTP, so awesome until 95% of its resources were consumed by its abuse as a file sharing platform for (naughty to nasty) images and pirated software and until power-hungry local group moderators started abusive banning/deleting practices against people who disagreed with their opinions on politics etc.
People want their own fluffy & safe social bubbles, not open, distributed networks.
The current Internet is a monoculture