The moment the Internet began supporting something as simple as real-time chat, or even email, the need for a secure connection between two network hosts became apparent. Imagine sending a confidential message to a friend of yours without being able to make any reasonable assumption that your message would remain private. Certainly, you would restrict your online interactions to only the most mundane of tasks and messages. And that's only considering our intuitive desire for privacy in personal matters. That says nothing for the need to protect private, personally identifying information that could be used by a malicious actor to commit fraud.
Without some measure of security in our online interactions, no one would dream of doing anything as critical as banking, accessing medical information, or paying our taxes. Indeed, tasks that seem so basic...