I probably appear as Mr. Google Kool-aid at the moment, but the things you're talking about have some common properties - doing them as distributed and/or trusted things is hard, in theory and practice both. You have to get all the people you care about to buy into something. Email used to be at least a lowest common denominator of communication, but even that doesn't quite work any more, and any richer experiences require software, somewhere, and today, the way to do that with people on N platforms (including mobile devices) is web apps, which means a server, which means giving up control.

Maybe the future is RSS++/PubSubHubBub/whatever readers for everyone, on their local co-op vegan ISP, but that's not where the money is, so it'll be an uphill battle.

(This low-coherence rant brought to you by homemade ethanol, which is legal, fun, old-school, and a great source of local community. Good beer doesn't travel well.)