> Here’s a concrete example: in last year’s lockdown, my local coffee shop started to deliver beans. They set up a slick web store with Shopify. They took payme

> Here’s a concrete example: in last year’s lockdown, my local coffee shop started to deliver beans. They set up a slick web store with Shopify. They took payment with Stripe or Square. The owner’s kid brought the beans round on his bike. In other words, they competed with Amazon, because they had to! I'm sorry but the local coffee shop was never competing with Amazon in the first place. In fact, the local coffee shop further entrenched big tech because it did not setup its proper ecommerce website, host it on its own servers and processed payments with crypto instead. The local coffee shop might have in fact jeopardized itself. Some local shops are still relevant because they cater to their specific area. By going online, this shop might give valuable information to what this special area is demanding; and if Amazon can buy this data, it's only a matter of time before the local coffee shop is doomed. > Firms begin to incorporate magic into their production processes. Some wizards specialize in helping particular sectors. Gradually, the dark arts diffuse into the population. The magic becomes mundane. I have very high doubts. The pandemic did push people online but I hardly find people learning development or technical skills; or at least trying to incorporate them into their workflows. They, at best, use the plug&play tools with no idea how these things work or without even reading the license. They also have no idea how their personal data is used and do not really care. The OP example of the local coffee shop is revealing. The coffee shop did not build his own website, did not run his own local server and did not process digital crypto payments. He could have done all of that and relied on no company to run his stack. Instead, he just setup a Shoppify store that has everything as plugins and pays a subscription to that.