Veering a little further off-topic: In general I think the rule must be that for the average human (however you determine that) excitement and enjoyment levels over a given time window rise monotonically as you slide that window forwards in time, of course over some minimum size, probably 5-10 years, to smooth over catastrophic dips such as the most recent global recession.
People (my past self included) always instinctively think that periods in the past must have been better, freer, more exciting than the boredom and drudgery of today (all the ideas have been taken, all the frontiers explored, all theories examined) but in fact this is a line of thought that has persisted throughout human history (there's a famous quote about Physics being 'done' from the 1920s which is obviously amusing to think about almost 100 years on) and even when we think of the people who had it best in history, the kings of nations even, the average working person in the first world is vastly, vastly wealthier in many more ways and has more options on what to do with their time than those individuals could have dreamed of.
tl;dr - life for the average person only gets better, more exciting and more enjoyable as time goes on! Try to remind yourself of that often, when it seems like it's not the case, and never take it fore granted.
Well I am actually different in that I am jealous of the future but wonder how much better things can actually get?
Think about the pyramid of human needs from food and shelter to travel and entertainment.. How much better can food get, how much more enjoyable can a TV show get after breaking bad? haha
I hope I am wrong but I feel we have achieved 90% in each of the 'categories'. The last 10% will probably take 90% of the time it too to get here.
I agree, save for some breakthrough technologies that will be completely different, like truly immersive VR, robot helpers, good AI, space travel (where the average person is currently experiencing roughly 0%) I think most of the fundamentals are very well covered in the year 2015 - over 90% of where we'd want these things to be, definitely.
I'm inclined to think that now we need to focus more on time, and our enjoyment of it. At the risk of sounding like an incorrect and broken John Maynard Keynes record, the next golden age of humanity, and our goal, frankly, should be a future of plenty where we drive down the cost of these fundamentals to the point where we have to work a lot less, or even not at all, to enjoy them as a practically free baseline.
There will always be new toys to 'work' for and the economy (a version of it) will always keep spinning for those interested in such things, but a future where good food, shelter, travel, entertainment are free as a base to the average person is an utter paradise by today's standards - we're not even remotely close to that - it's attainable only some of the time, and then only in theory, only by significantly-above-average earners in the richest countries (by which I mean taking significant periods of time out from work, and having enough saved that these things are all still attainable).
I'm very jealous of a future where we all achieve that, to be honest. I hope we do.
People (my past self included) always instinctively think that periods in the past must have been better, freer, more exciting than the boredom and drudgery of today (all the ideas have been taken, all the frontiers explored, all theories examined) but in fact this is a line of thought that has persisted throughout human history (there's a famous quote about Physics being 'done' from the 1920s which is obviously amusing to think about almost 100 years on) and even when we think of the people who had it best in history, the kings of nations even, the average working person in the first world is vastly, vastly wealthier in many more ways and has more options on what to do with their time than those individuals could have dreamed of.
tl;dr - life for the average person only gets better, more exciting and more enjoyable as time goes on! Try to remind yourself of that often, when it seems like it's not the case, and never take it fore granted.