Early 2000s tech was shared similarly to the handscroll. You physically would gather people to the computer room, because there was a dedicated computer room in houses, or you'd split screen video game.
You couldn't add anything, other than forums, and posting there tended to be a solitary thing like current (anti?)social media, but it was more of a real life experience.
But I still think 99% of the problem with the internet is just that we spend all day on it. There's nobody to create any content about real life if everyone scrolls all day, and if you're too addicted, no content to find that inspires you do do anything in real life(There's amazing DIY videos, you can learn basically anything, but it only works if you actually then put down the screen and do it)
Pages.
Hit the paywall, so I couldn't read the article, but here is an article about Chinese handscrolls:
https://www.invaluable.com/blog/chinese-painting-handscroll/
You read them horizontally, in a mode that indeed is quite similar to today's virtual scrolling.
So I guess, the alternative to infinite vertical scrolling is... infinite horizontal scrolling?
Paywalled.
Terrible headline. The article provides does nothing of the sort, it's just a meandering, musing on the nature of scrolls. It's filler. Lovely magazine prose.