Very interesting that you mention TV, because this had been exactly my thinking process lately. It's starting to look like the goal is to fully commercialise the Web which leaves many (most) with no choice but to follow suit.
- 1450 Gutenberg - 1970 Arpanet
- 1500 Luther - 1990 Berners-Lee
- 1700 Leibniz - 2010 Open Access, Open Science
- 1800 USA - x, major event towards the freedom of the internet
If we count in decades, suppose both processes as exponential and we take Gutenberg - Arpanet as the 0 point, then we see
2^t_internet = 5^t_gutenberg
which suggests that the major event x would be at about 4.6 decades after the Arpanet. :)
t_internet - t_arpanet = 2^p
t_history - t_gutenberg = 5^p
where t_internet is in the range [t_arpanet, 210] (in decades) and t_history is in the range [t_gutenberg, t_arpanet] (in decades).
Therefore, if a historic event related to the printing press occured at t_history time (in decades) then the equivalent event related to the net occured at t_internet (in decades), given by te formula:
t_internet = t_arpanet + (t_history - t_gutenberg)^0,43067
where 0,43067 = (ln 2)/(ln 5).