Having lived in the SBC and industrial space my entire career I'd probably take issue with that statement if I could be bothered to.

I'll amend it to "cheap credit-card sized computers" if it makes you feel better.

Gumstix have been around for what, about 10 years IIRC? They are more expensive than what I'm talking about. The point I'm making is that CPU boards on the level to run flavors of Linux easily are approaching "jellybean" component status and that will enable applications that simply weren't feasible before.