The surveilance works also in reverse. Black Lives Matter wouldnt be there if there wasnt the masses surveil the supressors.
Alot of technology benefits are non visible today- but imagine any nasty event- and notice how a lot of the implicit knowledge of a society would survive today- encoded in videos, automated tutorials and wikipedia articles.
And it even makes kind of sence. Investing into "Leaps" forward can fail in a thousand ways, investing into measure that prevent society from falling down completely and allow fast recoverys, well that is something that can become usefull a hundred times over.
Its like a dice where one in nth sides gives you a chance to leap forward - and 0.5*n of all sides have a chance you must step permanently back. Removing those sites of the dice from the scenario tree, is statistically OP though not really cool to watch.
The only thing currently not OP is how companys research is directed towards local optima. There are no big attempts to lift whole areas of endavours in feasability.
Actually, if i had the whole picture- i would guess that humanity is currently on some sort of golden path.