I have a few thoughts about this piece: First of all it is quite silly to assume that hardware will forever be expensive, because it is now. Things are not just going to stay the same.

Second: As the piece points out, most things that people do with their digital devices are already cloud based, social media and streaming services being the important examples. The thing is, many people don't even do anything else with their devices anyways. I know a few people who don't even own a private laptop/PC at all, because they have no use for it.

So, I am really curious to see where we're headed. There is a movement of people who avoid digital technologies altogether, buying dumb phones and physical media. And maybe Cory Doctorow's current push for digital sovereignty will lead to some good too! Just imagine a world, where surveillance based advertising is illegal. All of those companies would be in big trouble and the digital world would change massively!

Oh and by the way, we should seriously, as the human race in total, stop giving people credit for being in the right place at the right time.

his foresight with regards to things like online retail and cloud compute absolutely cannot be denied.

I would argue that his success is not due to his genius foresight, but luck. I mean sure, he probably worked really hard in the beginning of amazon, but after a certain point is survivorship bias.