[RiverCrochet]

The Internet is not the first global network. Before the Internet, you had the global telephone network. It, too, strangulated end users, but eventually became stagnant, overpriced, and irrelevant. Super long-term, the current Internet is not immune from this. Internet standards are about getting as complicated and quirky as the old Bell stuff that was trying to make miles of buried copper the future, and if regulatory/commercial forces freeze this stuff in place, it's going to lead to stagnation eventually.

Something coming down the pike I think, for example, is that IPv4 addresses are going to get realllly expensive soon. That's going to lead to all sorts of interesting things in the Internet landscape and their applications.

I'm sure we'll probably have to spend some decades in the "approved devices and browers only" world before a next wave comes.