Distrust? Sort of. People like to whine about Facebook, but they are still using it, or they migrate from Facebook to Instagram. Amazon is still growing. The news that the US government was spying on everyone came out years ago, and nobody did anything about it.

The current story is that automation will make all the dull jobs go away, and we're going to get Universal Basic Income. That's the mythic emblem for a bright, high-tech future, alive and well.

I work in AI, and nobody is stopping to ask the question: how happy are people going to be in a future without a practical sense of purpose, where a machine can do anything you could do better than you? Yes, I know, if you're a well-adapted individual, you should be able to derive your sense of purpose somewhere else besides work... Like, by making paintings that nobody will care about.