Invasion Day and the future

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If you consider life as a race and the goal is to get to the end of it you develop a particular type of self destruction that nobody admires but when we consider society as a race with the goal to get to the end of it everyone applauds.

Most of the developments we applaud could have been considered inevitable.  I'm not a luddite and I am not one who insists the past is better because it mostly sucked as well but for all the development the world is doing most of it isn't dripping down to improving humanity or improving life at this point so I am skeptical of any points made that we need to rush mankind's "growth".

But let us take the incredible changes in just the last 15 years.
15 years ago, sat nav was a must when renting a car 
Now, app based maps do the job. Far better than static sat nav.
Electric vehicles.
The cloud! You can run incredibly complex models on the cloud that you’d break your head over 15 years ago
Phone based delivery apps. I can’t remember when I last ate at a restaurant 

And so forth.

Are we not happier today than 15 years ago ?
I think so, there’s more free time, don’t have to go into work every day, and there’s streaming and better phones 

I think life in the 90s was fairly barbaric, though at the time it looked like we were doing so much better than the cavemen of the 70s, who had telex

no, technology is advancing and the speed is increasing.  It is not far off that humans will be irrelevant and it seems inevitable at this point that some future generations of us will no longer be organic but rather data based.

Yah, GPS is great.  I used to use maps.  Maps were great too for reasons that people today will never understand.  And they were a great metaphor as well.  Pocket based computers were always inevitable but their actual usage ends up just being to endlessly scroll pre fed media and people actually don't seem happier at all for doing it though I am sure nobody would want to live without it.

I could live without a better phone forever and as much as I use it and rely on it I doubt it has made me objectively happier.

Free time?  I suppose but is it really free when everyone has to scroll at least 6 hours a day on their phones?  I am not one to judge the values of others but even people stuck in the cycle recognize the additional time isn't bringing them happiness.

Multiple studies have shown Gen Z to be the least happy generation since studies have started and it looks like Gen Alpha will beat them at least at that.