Yeah..what happen to freedom?
I booked only the round trip flight and the first hotel for our China trip for flexibility reason too.
The first hotel and round trip ticket is necessary though for VISA-Free policy requirement.
I can understand people who want convenience and willing to pay the price for it,
which is giving up the personal authority and privacy up to certain point...
but unfortunately, most of them don't understand the wish of the other rest to keep it and agree to pay the price of having less convenience.
Anyway both decisions have their own merit and disadvantages afterall.

I think, for the older generation or those who want to avoid using those technologies for ideological reason for example but want to travel abroad, there's still the option to let everything arranged by a travel agency and book a pauschal trip 😉.
The immigration officer want paperless procedure, hence the e-Travel declaration.
TBH I don't know if they still have paper forms ready for exceptional cases like elderly visitors or unaccompanied minors.
I filled in the form for my father in law when he visited us few months ago and just sent him the QR-Code via E-Mail.
He printed it out to show it to the border control officer.

You can still use cash for small purchases everywhere at the moment.
There's no country that completely ban hard cash, fortunately, but many of them are going towards cashless payment slowly.
Many of small vendors in tradional market in my homeland Indonesia now also provide QR-Payment.
One biggest advantage of using QR-Payment is: you can save money by avoiding the foreign card withdrawal fee which is rather high.
And many shops in 3rd world countries also charge you for credit card transaction, that's why QR-Payment gives a huge advantage but still convenient.
It's aimed exactly for the small transaction (in China it's no fee for less than 200 RMB transaction).

I'm not 100% sure,
but I heard in Swedia there's so called "freedom of contract" which allows even small vendors/shops to go cashless or decline hard cash payment by mutual agreement.
The clausle "mutual agreement" is fulfilled in a way that they put a sign on the door, cos if you come inside & buy, it means you agree with their term to go cashless :-D.
Only essential services for public like medical treatment or anything of that sort have to accept cash.
Norway and Netherlands are also over 97% cashless countries.
You're right, it's kind of scary if suddenly there's any unforeseen problem in internet connection or hacking scandal at the larger scale.