Or consider the much more "cynical" (and in my mind more obvious, if it wasn't for our habit of seeing patterns everywhere) view that there might not be any str

Or consider the much more "cynical" (and in my mind more obvious, if it wasn't for our habit of seeing patterns everywhere) view that there might not be any structure, cyclical or other, to the course of history. In that view, whether the future of the internet will be centralized or decentralized is undetermined and will most likely be a mishmash of both, the extent of with will depend on inertia, ideology, economics and luck.