We humans are analogue beings really, once the tech removes us further and further from the process, satisfaction falls away. I think cameras losing shutters will be the next step that pushes many into looking for ways to relight the pleasures of the actual photographic process.
Regarding compacts, I recently gave my original G1X to a friend who took it on holiday to the States; I’d left the camera in very flat neutral picture style, and he was shooting jpeg, but the flatness allowed me to edit his pictures satisfactorily and print them out at A3, and they are really very good, some beautiful shots of Bryce Canyon. I can produce images with my G1Xiii that are virtually indistinguishable from my FF gear. The facts are that (relatively) modern compacts can make very high quality images without the necessity of larger, more diverse systems.
