On the first point, I'm not sure. I definitely agree that left to their own devices the AIbros would just keep expanding and battling each other and chasing ever more pie in the sky. But I don't think they'll be left to themselves. I think the MBAs will move in and take over, and it'll shift to standard corporate tactics of buyouts and mergers and bankruptcies and liquidations, and inevitable consolidation. On the second, I agree. I think the web is actually going to effectively split into a commercial system of monolithic corporations and subscriptions and fixed hardware and a much less formal true web of small servers and self hosting and ad hoc networks.

Who pays for your servers and static ip.

It's encryption has been broken for some time now, which leaves it vulnerable to some pretty serious security issues. On top of the obvious issue of people with the right know-how just listening to your calls and reading your texts, which you probably don't want. (It's also how most cops/feds tap phones these days.)

Yeah no, I have seen multiple businesses closing down due to poor marketing promotion/budget. And then we all complain that we didn't know about a certain product/service because they didn't market it good enough (we have seen it a lot of times with movies for example, then they turn into obscure classics with the pass of time, but not really profitable), also some games that didn't really made themselves known while in critical selling weeks? Who is gonna be the brave soul to release a game when GTA VI appears? That would be marketing suicide, no matter how good your game is.

Our reality feels superficial and degenerate. I suspect it was ever thus. As long as wars are far away they won't seem real.

I'm in a rural place and I just have DSL for my house and LTE for my phone. Lived here 20 years and that's the worst thing about it.