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I've been on the Internet since Usenet was where it was at, and the community was small enough that Nettiquette could be reliably enforced by an email to the offending user's sysop. Those _were_ the days.
As for the future -- remember back in the '80s when people told us that computers would disappear -- that many devices would have intelligence in them without being computers? Well, they were right in that embedded computers are everywhere, but I've still got a general-purpose PC on my desk. I think that the Internet will go the same way. Part of it will "disappear:" it'll be in phone calls and television broadcasts, on demand and otherwise, and in videophones and all sorts of other digital devices that'll come along as demand increases. And it'll all be Internet-based, but all the user will see is the TV or the telephone or the stereo.
The rest of the Internet -- the keyboard-based, text-based part -- will still be here, maybe bigger than ever. But it'll be dwarfed by the parts that take over our audio and video infrastructure from the current telecom and broadcast technologies. Just as commercial Internet use has dwarfed the original volunteer/hobbyist/enthusiast Internet, even though the enthusiast Internet (like this place) has always continued to grow.
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