I don't think he's excessively grim given that he, like a lot of us, thought of the Internet as a separate thing with its own politics. This and most of the things he's said over the last couple of years just follow from realizing that the Internet is no escape.
The internet has a culture that is rooted in pre-web days, but as far as politics, I think to the extent they existed, it was only because it was happening below the radar. The early culture was unique in that those of us that came early shared a common intellectual and technical curiosity. The internet has changed the masses, but the masses couldn't come on board without changing the internet. But we are already moving forward. It's not stopping here. The next networks will be decentralized. The masses will arrive there in the next couple of decades, new economies and cultures will result, and its pioneers will lament what could have been.