What's the Utility of Lateness?

What happens after modernity? Or does late just mean that we're realizing that it's not as sustainable, not as essential as maybe we thought when we were early. There is a sense of pessimism about this stage of our culture, no future. So I think it's sort of up in the air late means probably that it's beginning to look as though we can't afford to keep going in the direction that we are now. And so even though I'm not sure we will come out of late modernity on a good side, or whether there will be massive environmental collapses that we will finally push ourselves over the nuclear brink,. I don't know but I think I continue to hope