If you define Internet as "place only accessible to me and my snotty Intellectual compadres" then yes, it's lost. I'll go even further: it never actually existed.

I don't even want that Internet of yours, where only your vision of cyberspace future is a valid one. I much prefer the current, egalitarian Internet, that everyone can put to use without the need to ask your permission or acceptance.

Some tweet inane thoughts and some contribute to the biggest, multi-lingual, freely licensed encyclopedia in the world.

Some use it to spread government propaganda and some expose uncomfortable government secrets on a scale that has never been done before.

Some express their annoyance with number of idiots in general populace and some spend hours writing useful software and making it available for free, with source.

The Internet is a messenger, not the message. That Internet is doing quite well, my friend, and it's only getting started.

It did exist, in the very, very early beginning it was accessible only to professors, grad students and the like at a few high quality universities.

...who used it to UUCP-mail each other ASCII porn.

I think we'll find that this "idiocy" is not a feature of the human condition, but a consequence of the disempowering, elite-owned, few-to-many, aimed-at-the-median, passive-yet-catchy, culturally homogenizing nature of TV. What we're seeing now worldwide is a gradual shaking out of the TV mindset, with the youngest generations the least poisoned.

In other words, don't despair of your cool future yet.

There's much more variety on the Internet and barriers vanished.

Everything is more accessible and it's easier and cheaper to deliver content.

Sounds like a major improvement to me.