[duskdozer]

You could do all those things 10 if not 15 years ago, with maybe the exception of the last one - mainly driven by the onset of the COVID pandemic forcing people to think differently about things for a brief time - in a much less hostile climate. And big tech isn't even required for let alone the best implementation of all those things, it's merely situated itself as the default.

[ben_w]

Even with the last one, "I enjoy being able to easily work from home", the reason "cottage industry" has that name is one of the pre-industrial-era modes of production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putting-out_system#Cottage_ind...