Automation have been going on for a very long time. One can probably say the automation first started when man learned how to harness other forms of energies to do work such as water for a watermill, and wind for a windmill. Later man learned about mechanics, and used mechanics and other forms of energy like gravity to create clocks, catapult, aqueducts and so forth. Each of these invention reduced the caloric need of man to do work and thus freeing man to do leisurely things like vices and virtues. Today automation is so ubiquitous we would not notice it unless we are looking for it. When you click on a website, automation is happening to pull up a library page stored on the world biggest library, the Internet. This have extended into e-commerce like Amazon, Ebay, Jet, Alibaba, and so forth. In the past few years we've experienced another form of automation called Machine Intelligence. When you are on facebook and facebook knows what you like and want, that's Machine Intelligence at play. Some argue it is the first wave of artificial intelligence (if there is such a thing). Last year Google's Deepmind claimed the game Go against the best human player. Of course I think all games where a machine versus 1 man is unfair but that's another topic. With Google's Deepmind claiming general purpose intelligence using self learning genetic algorithm, what else will be automated? How are you participating in this new form wave of enterprises?
Those talking about e-commerce, IMHO, that came and gone with machine intelligence as I don't think there is much space left on e-commerce to make money but we will see won't we. The new enterprises will be built by those individuals harnessing machine intelligence to do new and interesting things... Are you informing yourself of the future? If not, look it up.