The key to the web's success is its completely unparalleled levels of accessibility. All you have to do is remember a domain name and you have a portal into anyone's personal network application on any device; that feature can never be topped regardless of the tech's quality or the marketing budget.
Never? That's a silly thing to say in the computer industry. I'm going to guess that we'll have an alternative to the web sometime in the next 20 years.
I don't know about that. Considering the possibilities with AR/VR, quantum computing, machine learning, smart fabrics and environments, and the like and seems to me there could be an incentive for an alternative inside a 20 year timeframe. Will all that run over the web, or have a web interface? I tend to think at some point big technological changes will make an alternative appealing.
But maybe not and it will all be web assembly apps writing to a canvas container ;)
The possibilities for multimedia and gaming are quite interesting, but there is no reason to suggest that this technology will have any impact on an any possible alternatives to the web.
>quantum computing
Quantum computing is in the "unforeseeable" category, we're not even entirely sure that quantum computing will ever be practical (as far as general purpose computing goes), certainly it has no implications with regard to an alternative to the web.
>machine learning
Same situation here. The machine learning discipline is expanding quickly and yielding very interesting developments, however, there's just no reason to suggest that machine learning will provide the impetus for a transition into a web alternative.
> smart fabrics and environments
Same here too.
All of these developments are orthogonal to the state of the web and none of them really provide any mechanism or incentive to create or move to an alternative.