...says Retric, typing on a cheap, portable super computer which is connected to a globe-spanning network that pipes all the world's information directly into one's eyeballs, on-demand, at the speed of light...
You skipped over cheap portable supercomputer...all the worlds information
The internet may be a few decades old but we're just getting started using it, and portable computing using the Internet has accelerated rapidly in the last decade along with virtual assistants, AI, bioinformatics, autonomous cars, robotics, drones etc etc. Lots of things are changing very rapidly right now.
The world-wide web of the mid-to-late 90s is a qualitative improvement over the internet of 45 years ago. Heck, when I was a kid, ubiquitous videoconference (on non-mobile terminals!) was Science Fiction. Today, when someone sees me VC'ing with my mom at the other side of the planet, using a thin screen I can hold in my hand, it's just a dull urban thing.
The internet is 45 years old. Companies started laying huge fiber optic networks in the 70's.