Thanks, even moi had noticed some of these bizarre matters. Just not as intimately.. oblig <YPB!>
And I'd buy-the-book. Except no gots/prolly no wants a Kindle. :-/ Maybe he has a dead-tree thing I can pay him for..
Boffo! description of (what's in Store? what's Here-now?? ... ) inviting all sorts of delicious imaginations of..
WHAT, exactly might a 2014,15 ... 18? FAIL manifest-like, in the narrow category of an Intarweb discorporating via
n!

He no psychotic, I wot (and never was, I'd still wot--however useful a McGuffin/hook that story might be.) Something-else..
Think this because.. to moi this delightful screed is simultaneously Tragic in implications: on/for all Scales of 21st Century [efforts at] 'communication' er, 'science'.
aka Just How? overdue is: Web-II?
and could such a rollover-ever happen without simultaneous reform on so many levels (OSs through all Apps etc.) And HTF could ya Do That?
(We can't even get 'Solons' to think Rationally ... yet.)

Thing is, early-on I noticed that I Liked 'puzzles'.. not Loved- nor LOVED!- 'puzzles'. Thus did not seek them out (nor consider crafting a liff-of-doing just That.)
So when I (assigned-myself) to a task of somewhat.. grokking what these shiny new $20K/each PDP-8 boxes were about.. I began from a clean, ie near-empty mind.
Knew other-base Systems, how the early monster-vac-tube gadgets did their arithmetic, and how things like ALUs functioned.

Got Boole book, learned the symbols, did the exercises. FIFO, Octal [that's not Base-2--why? Oh.. 'practicality' as in engineering stuff] Etc.

Point:
I Can sorta see (from the steps I learned next) where *I* glimpsed.. both the Magic AND the Horror of 'where this stuff was --> ~~> going?' (close-enough.)
Maybe the first hearing of recursive was the first clue; maybe comparing Turing's super-human accomplishments at Bletchley (with my own jelloware) amplified that inkling.

Dunno [but all we really Own is our own experience, on our own level.] I can imagine, had I pushed beyond.. (thus: accepting that, Fortran was Worth grokking-to-fullness !?)
I would soon have surpassed my level of competence--with no fire-in-belly as comes from Loving some Idea.

And then I'd likely have turned 'psychotic' in one of its lovely forms--as Mr. Welch had? thought he had??
Maybe he just scared-Self via a much more intensive Peek-->Ahead?? (all buried in subconscious.)
Nobody Can function indefinitely, in Emergency-mode 24/7, or even /5.
(Does The World know this, yet?)

What I couldn't possibly get is.. how?? so humongous a world-wide 24/7 network can tolerate the sum-of all these complexities and their individual quirks: indefinitely.

How could one 'model' such a dynamic overall-System so as to anticipate.. plan for work-arounds for? ...
some next-thing not ever seen before? From malicious intent through so-so coding, honest errors, insanely-great new browser features
(with an undetected Gotcha) and so on. It's a perpetual moving target.

(I mean--I'd eschew a ride on an Airbus, simply for concluding that it is fatally flawed in One (I call paramount) design-idiocy: the bloody control yokes do NOT move,
signal-in-tandem, so that both pilots Know what each is doing.) As in Flt. 447(?)

The web isn't an airplane; in terms of sheer #connections, it is an unprecedented behemoth, and I couldn't remotely-guess about n-failure modes
it may or may not already capably anticipate. Can anyone? (especially about clever/malevolent attacks by the clued-in.)

[HTF could you even shut it All down for, say a day of roll-out testing/preventive tests etc, what with all this cloud-storage techno as would just Stop.]
Guess we'll find out (surely there are Web-II prototypes already beyond alpha testing. Shirley.)
But ever using such would dwarf the problems of changing driving habits instantly from L-lane --> R-lane, as when Sweden switched.