Exactly, my television is an ips lcd with an arm based programmable microcomputer with software that translates input signals for the display, LED backlighting and an internal power supply. Although, I wouldn’t be able to repair it, there are no spare parts.

Every washing machine has an embedded system that controls the washing cycle and needed programming for that. That’s not common knowledge and they rather put functionality in their marketing than function.

We need a right to repair and common instructions how to fix things, maybe that helps dissolving the magic.

I think this is one step further, that technology has become so abstract and complex that people who focus on different crafts and careers are using magical black boxes. It blows my mind how my neighbour goes through life without any concept of what a phone app is. He just uses functionality and memorized the associated logo. I’m an engineering wizard to him.

Who knows what this new money will do with the old ad-financed entertainment parts of the internet. VR/AR could actually get a second chance and maybe “smart” devices more usefulness than spamming ads. I hope cities and municipalities discover their role as online activity promoters for offline life.

We are in a new phase and what you call stagnation is actually the maturity and stability of the internet that is spawning new services at the moment. For example:

Logistics are coming online. Loading lists, import/export paperwork, scheduling your truck unloading time from your smartphone. Lots of saas startups in that area.

Factories are coming online. Scheduling production across factories/countries on a single product level is still sci-fi, but they are working on it.

Trades are coming online. Billing software, planning, documentation. Each sector has their own ways to get accelerated and now they see value in it.

Plenty of stuff that was happening in excel sheets is replaced with a tailored web services which are content aware and allow live data entry/analysis from multiple end points.

There is so much work to be done. Universal availability and reliability of data centers, mobile networks, fibre connections were the backbone neccessary to build the next generation of services. They are in the making.