"Normal users" certainly used email clients, installed web browsers, and used local page-creation tools. That certain technologies have made these tasks easier does not mean that those specific technologies were the only way forward, or that those technologies are without drawbacks. Publishing Turing-complete blobs clearly gives the creator the most freedom and power, but at the expense of limiting the consumers' options to "experience content as intended" or "don't".

My whole point is that this philosophy of server-knows-best is causing the 'web' to revert to the standard creator -> middleman -> passive consumer chain. Of course many different "ways" of publishing are flourishing - those are the middlemen!