Personally I’m less bullish on oil as the metaphor given how much of the modern world is underpinned by cheap and ubiquitous oil. If oil disappeared tomorrow, society would collapse — if tobacco disappeared tomorrow, it would make some subset of the population very unhappy for a few weeks.

Software engineering AI API dependence seems to have already screamed past the tobacco mark but we’re still a long ways away from oil. Though I would bet that we hit it sometime in the next few decades once the bulk of the industry has never written code in any serious capacity.