i continue to wonder if the fact that societal progress seems to have stalled so much is because in the 20th century, we have started reaching the point where instead of requiring technology to improve, it now requires people to improve, and a lot of people do not want to improve

and while at first, the expected improvements were relatively benign ("people are expected to know how to read and write", "people are expected to have a decade's worth of general education", ...) they have now become more exhaustive and, because more and more of the world runs on democratic systems, it means that pretty much everyone now gets to participate in decisions that impact everyone else

knowing how to recognize misinformation, or check things against various sources, or to maintain privacy online, is now less of a "it's good for you" thing and more of a "do it because if enough people fail to do that, you get illiberal rulers winning elections and screwing everything up, you asshole" thing