But right now, the advantage seems to be with the Dot. Com companies because of their flexibility and focus. My own guess is that like in pro sports, what we'll see is steady rising standards of living for all players, while the very top stars or winners reap ever huger rewards. What is interesting so far is to see what the winners do with their wealth, and by winners I mean here middle America. To the extant that their jobs are plugged into the economy, their services and goods will obey the new rules.
Truckers ride incredibly wired cabs, and farmers are some of the most technologicalized jobs around.
Plumbers may only need a monkey wrench to unplug your drain, but they can't compete with other plumbers unless they advertise, have cell phones, remember who you are, etc. This means abandoning products and services that are still making money. It means leaving mainframe computers while they are profitable and heading into toy personal computers. It means leaving a multi-billion dollar copper wire phone system, while it is immensely profitable, and heading into fiber optic packet switch networks. It is very very very hard to do.