Why wouldn't it have come to this? Every revolution in communications (printing, radio, telephones, TV) came with an explosion of consumer demand and industrie

Why wouldn't it have come to this? Every revolution in communications (printing, radio, telephones, TV) came with an explosion of consumer demand and industries/jobs to serve it. The internet revolution is no different. If anything, it's more profound since coupling a more capable communications medium with the ability to execute logic against the information received is really two revolutions in one (three if you count the concurrent rise of wireless data over cellular networks). That being said, if you prefer not to work in web technologies, those jobs certainly exist: middleware/platforms, embedded systems/IOT, some of the stuff FAANG does, etc. Remember, all those people writing web stuff rely on a very tall stack of layers and platforms to do what they do. You can find these jobs, with a little patience and persistence.