I don't see any radical shifts in thought coming down the line any time soon. It would be interesting to see how the various apps / trending pages would change if people weren't able to purchase votes or if whales didn't have the massive influence they have.
It would be compelling to see if the majority of "stakeholder" rewards came from interest / curation -- and then the 'content' rewards could be more aligned on a 'per-vote' basis rather than rshares (or some other crap that I barely understand).
The infrastructure provided by the steem blockchain is actually super interesting and cutting edge -- but it's being utilized in very traditional, 'old-school' mentality ways where everyone is trying to maximize their ROI... Which isn't a massive surprise since it seems the most popular 'content' on here is blabbing about price-action and stock movement or whatever.