"I believe that, as a society, we're most comfortable living about ten years in the past."

- William Gibson, No Maps For These Territories (paraphrased)

So... there's a lot of unfounded assertions in your statement. Let's take a few statements and look at them before we begin:

We can travel to any corner of the world with unthinkable speed

We can travel from major air hub to major air hub at a substantial percentage of Mach 1. That's a long way from "unthinkable." Stand in a parking lot next to a tall building. Clap your hands once. That echo you hear? It's traveling faster than you can.

Sure, they couldn't do that a hundred years ago. But really, in the grand scheme of things, how much does it affect your life? Yeah, you're a couple grand and a week invested into a trip to Australia. How much world travel do you do? How much does it affect your life? Most of the world still lives within 30 miles of where they were born. Americans, if we're going to be specific, have been wandering for 150 years... and are here because of wanderlust. We've been nomads since the Reformation. And hey - if you want to visit the Empty Quarter it's just as much of a bitch for you as it was for TE Lawrence once you break clear of Riyadh. You aren't going to, though, so it doesn't much matter.

we can communicate instantly with people everywhere

And you have superficial relationships with disparate people all over the globe but you have fewer superficial relationships with people in your neighborhood. You've traded neighbors for usernames. It makes a difference, but it, too, is superficial.

The average person alive today possesses a much greater amount of knowledge and is exposed to much larger amounts of information than was the case at the beginning of the Twentieth Century

I'll top that - the average edition of the New York Times contains more information than a seventeenth century was exposed to in their lifetime. But again - how much of that information do you use? You filter it for what you need and ignore the rest. How much Internet usage did it take before you learned to ignore the ads to the left and right of the page? And how long did it take you to alter your browsing habits to avoid the sites that go more aggressive? You've adapted twice to information overload. It's just a thing.

Overpopulation has been a concern since Malthus. Overexploited natural resources are why Iraq, Lebanon and Israel are largely deserts. Yeah, we're living longer but the life expectancy of men in Russia dropped twenty years with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Don't get me wrong - lots of changes on this here planet. The past 100 years have included cars, indoor plumbing, telephones, widespread use of electric light, air travel, nuclear weapons and the Internet. But I was born in 1974 and the only one of those I've had to get used to was the Internet.

And trust me - I'm acclimatized.

My grandfather was born in 1917. He told me about the time his dad got a toilet put in. He didn't particularly marvel at the toilets in his house - after all, he'd had 80 years to get used to them. And I think that's what you're missing - holy fuck 100 years ago we rode horses is every bit as relevant as holy fuck a thousand years ago we were Saxons.

I don't know what "mentalities" you think you need to "catch up", but the last adaptation I made was "shit - a lot of the people who hire me are on Facebook, I better set up an account."

Sorted!

The thing you're missing is that victory belongs to those who adapt. The world you live in is being dictated by people who have figured out how best to take advantage of the situation. Are they acting selflessly? Hell no. But they also aren't acting in unison, either and pointing to your competitor and saying "that man there is destroying the commons, stop him!" is fair game.

The kids are alright, man. Watch a few episodes of Connections. You will understand, beyond a reasonable doubt, that "adapting" is what we do.