The difference between now and the past is that technology makes it increasingly possible to produce without people. In short, technology serves to insulate us from the reality of our practices. Sadly, I can foresee a world where an increasingly intelligent AI infrastructure takes care of an increasingly degenerate human population.
There was a Twilight Zone episode called "The Little Black Bag" wherein Chill Wills, a drunkard. discovers a doctors bag, full of special tools, from the future. It seems that the population had been dumbed down to such a degree that the tools had to have intelligence built into them. He started out making big bucks with the tools but then . . .
At the time, 1970s, I thought it was pretty far out. About a year or so later I was at a MacDonalds and saw a cash register with nothing but pictures of their wares on it. I asked the young girl what that was all about and she said that she no longer had to know the prices of the burgers, etc. - all she had to do was press the picture.
Soon after I quit reading Sci-Fi because all the things they were predicting were coming true within a year or so - and some of the things weren't pretty.