Specialization is a reflection of the increased study of the data. Its the result of Adam Smith, and Taylorism and Henry Ford identifying more and more details and then studying those some more looking for advantages. When our data tools were less sophisticated we didn't study as well or as efficiently. Now, we have data about things we never would have thought of 20 or even 10 years ago.
I had some elaborate riff about how soon AI and the algorithms were going to harmonize human existence but...lets not get carried away.