I don't think that you can generalize it the way he did. Sure Yahoo, Google, MS and Amazon are building huge data-centers. That's what makes it into the news. And yes there is a lot more processing to be done since we started to see wide spread use of applications (social networking, search, storage, video, etc...) in the Web opposed to the former mere HTML plus some e-commerce routines here and there. But on the other hand, a lot of software is not physically shipped anymore, and I think this trend will continue. More important, you have things going on like Akamai, and Amazon's S3. I would therefore argue for the exact opposite: Unless your Google or MS, it will probably not make any sense running your own data-centers. My guess is that we will see the creation of more S3 and Akamai-like products. Software companies will develop software but it will not be physically shipped, nor in most cases be self hosted. Specialized companies will due to the economies of scale be much more efficient at that. Software companies will be more lightweight. They create the software and nothing more. Just my personal analysis.
When you look at the "network computer" idea, it always made sense, but so many of its proponents just saw it the wrong way.
They figured that the server network would be much bigger, smarter and more distributed than individuals' computers. Sure. Makes sense.
So they went to work dumbing down PCs. Oops. They should have bet on the advancement of server network systems, not the regression of desktop technology.
