I'm one of the authors. Yes, much of it seems silly. But the fundamental point was that the Internet is a social space, and that is still true. At the time, that was not obvious to most of the media or businesses.

In addition, markets are far far far more conversational than they were before the Net.

But, yes, in 1999 we did not predict the degree of recentralization and corruption that would occur.

Should we be looking to halt or divert that trend of centralisation ? If so, do you have any thoughts on how?

On my less optimistic days it sure does feel like a lost battle.

Sure we should be trying to halt it! How? That's tough. We've got economies of scale and the network effect working against us. But there's a lot going on in a lot of places trying to address this. I'm no expert, but it's a topic of great interest at the Berkman Center (where I'm a senior researcher), e.g. AmberLink.org and Perma.cc. Tim Berners-Lee has the Solid project (http://www.csail.mit.edu/solid_mastercard_gift). BitCoin and especially the BlockChain tech underneath it offer some hope. The W3C WebID (https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebID) initiative could help decentralize authentication. There's no shortage of projects underway. But the forces of centralization are well-entrenched, powerful, and often offer great user experiences.

I share your less than optimistic fears. But one of the hopeful things about the Net is that large centralized players can co-exist with decentralized sites and services. The long tail does not get the attention that the short head does (by its very nature), but there will always (?) be lots of creative work and lots of meaningful connections being made there.

Not sure it can be.

The old systems where decentralized and used defined protocols by necessity.

This because you needed software at either end that understood each other over said protocol.

With higher bandwidth, more reliable connections, and the web, the protocols have become fluid, as one end is downloaded and updated each time someone types a url into a web browser.

In a sense we are back at the leased terminal era, only with prettier graphics.

I no longer fire up a usenet client, i go to reddit.com.

I no longer fire up a IRC client, i go to slack.com.

I agree with you, but the downvotes clearly show that others disagree strongly!

Tech columnist John C Dvorak wrote a very entertaining review of the The Cluetrain Manifesto. Here it is from from 2002:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,43161,00.asp

Markets fix everything eh?

"Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy" is flat wrong. Due to attention limits, brands, and the hierarchical nature of DNS, hyperlinks actually accrete value up the hierarchy and promote winner take all markets.

Do people follow hyperlinks to find things? No, they "Google it." Everyone puts free data on the Internet and Google monetizes it by providing a single entry point.

Dude, we all work here.