It's the realization that there's a lot more than a dumb terminal and a dumb human at the end of the net connection. We're not just eyeballs, we create stuff too. And the PCs are powerful things, capable of doing much more than being an HTML browser and MP3 player. Today's machines are marvels of power, much of it untapped. It's quite possible to use the Internet to store user-authored stuff, with no compromise to anyone's intellectual property, and for those applications, having a central server is kinder to the Internet.
Servers are still important.
Evhead is blissing out on AppleSoup P2P crap. Supposedly, they're going to take the concept of Napster and incorporate payment schemes so people can do legitimate copying. Oh the bliss of enlightenment. The problem is two-fold. Evan has a brain, and integrity.