You had to carry a lot more shit around with you, especially on vacation. If you were traveling, you might carry a still camera, a video camera, a Gameboy (or the like), a book or two, a CD player, your physical plane tickets, and so on (plus, toward the end, a device that did nothing but make and receive phone calls). The sheer number and variety of devices and objects that have been subsumed into the smart phone is absolutely mind-blowing when you really tally them all up--I walk out my front door every morning with what would have been a suitcase full of shit in 1990 in my front pocket.

The shittiest change is by far the expectation of connectivity. There's a pervasive demand--both in your personal life and your professional life--that you be reachable at pretty much any time. Not responding to a text or an email within a few hours is unusual to the point of warranting an explanation for at least some people sometimes. Your job can (and will) expect you to always be a phone call away.

I used to spend a lot more time reading books, but I also used to waste a lot more time mindlessly watching TV, so that's probably a wash.