There was a time (around y2k iirc) where you could buy a box preconfigured with databases and so on, there was a movement to make these things 'appliances' like toasters but the winds changed, sun and oracle were selling them and maybe netscape? I have a time capsule (which is still working) sitting in the corner quietly keeping backups for me - I don't do anything to it and it just keeps working. Maybe the issue isn't that the future is not self hosted but the future is appliances, it would be nice to have a server thing with some icons on it to make it a photo server/database server etc.

One of the reasons people use the cloud is because these things have become hard to set up, they really shouldn't be.