The Replacement

As I was walking home from a friend tonight I started thinking about it. It's a 10 minute walk which is mainly through a living area with houses all over the place. Tonight I paid attention to the rooms that were lit and out of the two houses in which I could spot people, in both of them someone was in front of a computer screen. As I got back home the first thing I did (before I took off my shoes even) was to turn on my laptop.

What does this mean?

Other than that computers and internet access are taken for granted and takes up a lot of people's time. I was just wondering what it is a replacement for. What did people do before us? What was the time spent online used for instead? Are we gaining or losing something from the growth of internet and our reliance on it?

What has the Internet replaced in our lives and what will ultimately be the consequences of this?