Is There Something About What Happened in the Last 100 Years That Can Inform the Future?

In 1923, Charles Steinmette saw the rise of electricity as a thing that would ultimately replace a lot of the work that we do. He thought that would be a good thing because it would just free us up to have more leisure time in our lives. Today, we see AI and automation as something that is going to take work away from us,. But we see that as a bad thing because we imagine it will just mean that there's less work to go around and people won't have enough money to live.