That's true, but I think that a serious argument can be made for the last few decades being the first point in time in humanity's recent history in which we are absolutely capable of achieving it.
There's definitely a shift going on. I suppose there has always been a shift going on - but it seems like throughout history the "shifts" have been relatively evenly spaced with regards to how they affect the "average persons" lifestyle, and what new things they enable us to do. The "shifting" going on right now, due largely to the advent of the internet, has obvious potential to radically change a lot of things about they way people live and organize.
It's become so much easier for a couple of people to start up a business doing what they like to do, and make a living off of it in the last decade that it's hard to believe - and this is almost all due to massive increases in the ability of people to communicate over large distances.
I'm young, but I really think that we may be living in a time where something closer to "utopia" for humanity (if you can ignore the cliche term) has moved, in about ten years time, from being the stuff of "nice ideals that simply won't happen" to "oh my this could actually happen, and is indeed happening in some areas".
Of course, just because we have the ability to doesn't mean we will. I would guess that as the average person becomes more aware of the sheer scale of the things we could be accomplishing that we will continue to move closer to all the failed promises and visions of the past, at an increasing rate.
To put it another way, the promises of the last century that you speak of were made by people who saw the potential of what could be done, but the advances were not enough to push the small groups ability to successfully implement things to the point where they could do so easily, or without a lot of capitol - large infrastructures, and people working 40 hours a week in said things were, at least partially, still necessary as business expanded to utilize the advances.
Now (for example) we have people paying their rent and bills by selling shirts that they silkscreen themselves in their homes, and they can sell to a global market with relative ease. A passionate individual or small group of people do not have nearly the amount of an uphill battle that they would have had even 5 years ago.
Granted, a lot of these people aren't going to be getting rich - but for a lot of people my age and younger (I'm 23), simply being able to have a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs without having to succumb to the 9 to 5 doing something that we absolutely do not care about at all (and that could probably be automated) is incentive enough.
There's definitely a shift going on. I suppose there has always been a shift going on - but it seems like throughout history the "shifts" have been relatively evenly spaced with regards to how they affect the "average persons" lifestyle, and what new things they enable us to do. The "shifting" going on right now, due largely to the advent of the internet, has obvious potential to radically change a lot of things about they way people live and organize.
It's become so much easier for a couple of people to start up a business doing what they like to do, and make a living off of it in the last decade that it's hard to believe - and this is almost all due to massive increases in the ability of people to communicate over large distances.
I'm young, but I really think that we may be living in a time where something closer to "utopia" for humanity (if you can ignore the cliche term) has moved, in about ten years time, from being the stuff of "nice ideals that simply won't happen" to "oh my this could actually happen, and is indeed happening in some areas".
Of course, just because we have the ability to doesn't mean we will. I would guess that as the average person becomes more aware of the sheer scale of the things we could be accomplishing that we will continue to move closer to all the failed promises and visions of the past, at an increasing rate.
To put it another way, the promises of the last century that you speak of were made by people who saw the potential of what could be done, but the advances were not enough to push the small groups ability to successfully implement things to the point where they could do so easily, or without a lot of capitol - large infrastructures, and people working 40 hours a week in said things were, at least partially, still necessary as business expanded to utilize the advances.
Now (for example) we have people paying their rent and bills by selling shirts that they silkscreen themselves in their homes, and they can sell to a global market with relative ease. A passionate individual or small group of people do not have nearly the amount of an uphill battle that they would have had even 5 years ago.
Granted, a lot of these people aren't going to be getting rich - but for a lot of people my age and younger (I'm 23), simply being able to have a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs without having to succumb to the 9 to 5 doing something that we absolutely do not care about at all (and that could probably be automated) is incentive enough.