Does the web gold rush constitute a brain drain?

A while back I was reading up on Dr. Eric Brewer's CAP theorem. That lead to watching his talk on the Computer History Museum [1]. From there, the trail led to the various computer scientists mentioned by Dr. Brewer in that lecture. The trail stopped at Paul Gauthier and diddit.com.

So I am asking HN (and perhaps this is the wrong place to ask this!), but does the web constitute a brain sink, and, what will be the long term consequences of diverting top end brain cells down the web drain?