I don't know about purest form but in 1993 when I first got access it was Gopher, email, MUDs, NNTP and IRC. Lots of different clients for different protocols.

I don't know about purest form but in 1993 when I first got access it was Gopher, email, MUDs, NNTP and IRC. Lots of different clients for different protocols. Anonymous FTP was how you got your stuff. Lots of Telnet (things like MUDs and library systems in particular). Very few ads. Images were something you actively sought out to download. Websites were new, relatively unusual and mostly text. Veronica seemed to be down all the time. No one worried that anyone else could see what you were doing, and most of the time, nobody cared. That last is what I miss the most.