You can say what you want about the paradigm shift where we were supposed to get free internet and LD and say it didn't come through but....
Dial up internet costs have gone down more than 50% on average. From $19.95 to $9.95. Broadband costs have gone down by 30%+ considering my first DSL package was $44.95 for 768/128 and is now $29.95 for 3.0/768.
LD 5 years ago was still 5 cents a minute for your home land line. I now pay $60 for home and unlimited local, regional and LD. That's 1,200 minutes at 5 cents a minute. Running an at home business I use that in 5 business days. So you can basically say my LD costs have decreased 70% in 5 years.
I don't know where you come from but to me that's overwhelming progress.
Oh, and the Xbox 360 is more of a Trojan Horse than any industry insider has really admitted. No one is paying attention to their phrase "Those who use Windows Media OS will recognize the GUI immediately." If you don't think you won't be able to use this for Office functions within 2 years.... you're blind.
I imagine using Excel with a joystick from across the living room is quite a challenge.