My 2002 experience was much as Bradypus and Kanga and Jeff Crawley have described. There was much more bookreading (I carried Oxford pocket classics of Anthony Trollope novels, as each chapter was pretty well a self-contained episode), with stacks of discarded or completed Paulo Coelho and Shirley MacLaine, and fervent journal-keeping. As albergues (the refugio term was dying out around then) were rarely open before 5, people would be found stretched out on benches and lawns dozing, sitting in cafes with a drink and socializing, particularly with speculation on how many showers there might be in the pueblo's single albergue--- a lot more gulag-like than the palatial establishments we have now. Small groups would huddle together in hunger for the opening of the village's single peregrino-menu restaurant at 7pm, or would sprint there after the village mass for an 8pm dinner so that they could get back before the albergue doors were nailed shut at 10pm. We would examine with tolerant curiosity the slice of carne served up with chips.
A few people were using cellphones, but they were mainly Spaniards engaged in their perpetual conversations with each other ("we like to talk," I was told). It was 2005 when a hairdresser from Manresa taught me how to text on a cellphone and this seemed to me to be a great improvement on trying to contact other pilgrims by leaving messages on albergue noticeboards.
I used the computers in public libraries/casas culturales for email and always found a few other pilgrims diligently typing away. Every now and then, I saw someone trying to upload photographs for their blogs (remember those?) and weeping with frustration as the bandwith failed. Public computers outside the casa cultural have almost disappeared, with perhaps the exception of urban locutorios which rely on Latin American and African customers keeping in touch with home.
One barkeeper told me that, in days gone by, the pilgrim with enter with a cheerful if tired "Buenos tardes," but now the greeting was "¿Hai wifi aquí?"
I have a recollection that English was not as universally used then as it is now, but that could be faulty memory. One of the reasons why I trudge the more obscure Caminos is that I find more of that pre-deluge experience, chatting with gardeners working on their roses (nothing like a carnation in one's buttonhole to elevate the tone of the pilgrimage), gifts of fruit from African farmworkers on behalf of their employers, drinks bought for me by Guardia Civil at the next table in a bar, requests by truckdrivers to remember their aunt Pilar for them when I got to Santiago, invitations outside ayuntamientos to come and kiss the bride, and being dragged off the Camino to join birthday picnics and toast the birthday boy/girl; my horrifically bad castellano no impediment to hearing extraordinary tales of childhood under the dictatorship, or complaints about the government.
But things change. Many more people are on the Francese and, one hopes, getting something from their Camino, even with their moviles.