One piece that I find interesting is how hopeful people sounded about tech that had access to your data. Folks higher up in the tech world often complain about how the media complains about them too much. And while the media definitely has issues in how they report, it's easier to see how we got to this point where tech is vilified. You compare the hope of the past and match it to the exploitation of the present, and you can't help but feel sometimes that in a game of picking straws, the current timeline picked dystopian over utopian.
> the current timeline picked dystopian over utopian.
If you structure your society around maximizing short-term profits, this is a utopia. We just picked the wrong way to structure society.
Reminds me of the old adage: your most bitter employee is the person who was most full of hope.