Great post! I definitely know what you're getting at.

As a side note on the Internet and how it's evolving, Have you read any Neal Stephenson? He writes a bunch of really fascinating cyberpunk stuff. You might find it very interesting.
From his Snowcrash Novel: "The Metaverse, a phrase coined by Stephenson as a successor to the Internet, constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future. Resembling an MMO, the Metaverse is populated by user controlled avatars as well as system daemons. Although there are public-access Metaverse terminals in Reality, using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the poor visual representations of themselves as low-quality avatars. Status in the Metaverse is a function of two things: access to restricted environments such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club, and technical acumen, which is often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar." - definitely give it a look. At the least check out the wikipedia article I just pulled that nice quote from. I think the wiki on it gives you an alright idea of his kind of writing.