Now I can find phone numbers, share photos with family, watch movies on demand and hurl abuse at politicians, all without leaving my chair.
A movie rental place had more or less all blockbusters (pun intended) and a huge stack of old movies. Netflix today, not the old postal order Netflix, has nowhere near the assortment of a kinda crappy movie rental place of the late 90s.
Farming is highly automated both in terms of pre-made bulk chemicals and machines on the fields.
We mass-produce cars. Indeed, we have cars that we can leave months on end without maintenance. And they run both faster and further than a horse.
We have automated labs that can produce and test medicine in high pace.
We have seriously large industries (gaming, cruising, performing arts) that do nothing but give people something to do now that we don't have to worry about having enough food by end of winter.
Having an abundance of food and not relying on substance farming for the majority of your needs also has the knock-on effect of kids not being needed on a farm, but getting education instead. Which in term will eventually lead to more industrialisation etc.
...but what does Upstart do? https://youtu.be/WWxl4W_eVUA?t=110
You are mistaking a (large, obnoxious, all-encompassing) trend of the economic moment (albeit a moment that has existed for 1.5 to 2 decades now) for the greater direction of civilization. A mistake in scale.
But < 2% of Americans anyway work in agriculture. Down from 98% a century or two ago.
And US population grew by what, 50% in 30 years? But jobs by 25%. Manufacturing jobs dropped steadily as a pct of population. Because, automation?
It's often repeated that automation just allows people to get better jobs running the robots. Trouble is, 2 people run a robot that replaced 200.
Just ask Detroit how much automation benefitted jobs.