It embodies the precise opposite of everything imagined by the e-commerce futurists

Costco do plenty of online only offers, partner with Doordash/Instacart, even sell holiday packages so I'm not sure how the author arrives at the conclusion they're at the "precise opposite of everything imagined by the e-commerce"

The only precise opposite is that they're still paying IBM goodness knows how much to stay on their AS/400 architecture.