Unfortunately, while I agree with you on the monoculture angle, I'm not sure this article covered it in any meaningful way.
It's really sad to grow food and know what it looks like, and then go into a grocery where everything looks like an identical twin. A forked carrot? Must have been mutated by nuclear waste! A strawberry that isn't the size of a Snickers bar? Can't possibly be good!
It's consumer attitudes and opinions that need to change to make this better. It's interesting in America especially where one of the foundational attributes of the culture is "individuality" that the consumers expect the opposite of their produce.
I vaguely remember watching an interview with an exec from Monsanto saying RoundUp was perfectly safe, safe enough to drink. Then immediately refusing to drink it when offered, because of course it's poison.
Our government, and moreso, our society through cultural and government apathy has devalued anything academic that does not produce material gains - capital, wealth, patents, etc.
I fear that the total commercialisation of academia means that we are unlikely to see meaningful material gains for society in terms of new cures to disease or technology advances outside of those that can be monetised for recurring revenue in the next decade.
It's really an unfortunate but self inflicted American problem.
I'm probably really ignorant asking this, but how do you "pause" schema migrations period. And even if you did, how do you ensure a consistent experience for your users if your db is broken? Some sort of application logic to deal with inconsistencies? That seems really expensive (from a development work perspective).
It only takes a couple weeks working in any company that has young employees to know that 90+% of those employees under 30 think they're the greatest thing since sliced bread and that all of their amazingness is simply unused and underpaid.
It's really sad actually because it means in 10 years we are gonna have significant work depression levels due to children being raised to believe their reality would be much different than it will turn out.