Re: @Scott Wheeler (was: We went from NCP to TCP/IP overnight.)
You're comparison is invalid, as you're attempting to equate two very different control structures: your network was centrally managed, with a dedicated team of engineers whose job it was to maintain it. They decide to switch from NCP on a date, and so the effort is coordinated so that this happens. Precisely because you controlled your entire network, there was no engineering team who could decide to not participate because "NCP is fine for us".
There is no such Central Command for "the Web", and that's why it takes so long to change things - nobody can tell people what to do with their own software and servers (an idea I thought would appeal to you, oddly enough). This has absolutely zero to with how intelligent you perceive the users to be: I very much doubt you worked in the only large organisation in history to not employ what you (wrongly) term "idiot users" who had difficulty in adapting to the new networking.
The other failure of your analogy is that your changes represented a binary switch from one distinct state to another, and these two states were incompatible. You presented users with a stark choice: fall in line, or lose all internetworking. Web technologies don't work like that: instead, it's, "upgrade, or you don't see the fancy typeface". Web browsers are written on the principle of being liberal in what they accept, and making the best of whatever document is given to them.