If only we can overcome our attachment to materialism and endless corporate idealism via marketing and advertisements. I personally don't think there will be any further developments in technology that will help humanity move forward or save us from the vicious cycle of endless production that we've dug ourselves into. We don't need faster phones. We shouldn't have to replace our electronic devices that often. We don't need fancy cars. We don't need big houses. You can only be in one room at a time. We don't need virtual reality. We don't need to buy a bunch of christmas presents for people who don't really need them - all of these things are creating so many different problems and the separation between workers producing the goods and consumers consuming them is where it all starts.
Consumers need to consider the labor that goes into producing the products they buy and how those products are made available to them. If someone were to understand every detail of how their resources were made and where it all came from, and if that consumer then felt ethically or morally against that process, then the obvious solution for that person is to not support the corporate entities that are creating this problem. Consumers are the financial fuel for the system of over-produced goods which are sold by corporations for profit, not necessarily to provide society at large with what they need in order to function and live happy lives. In terms of food, water, technology, and any resource you can imagine, we're constantly replacing goods before we make the most use out of them; it's wasteful.
Most food is poisoned with chemicals/preservatives so that they last longer (made for profit/compromises our health) and being that we are now heavily reliant on phones and computers in our everyday lives, it seems like our technological devices are not always made to last nowadays. I remember my first cell phone (flip phone) lasting me eight years without any problems and now it's clear to me that the cell phone companies now know they can get away with creating smart phones that are very fragile/extremely sensitive to battery usage and can only function properly for up to a year or two before needing to be replaced. I don't really use my phone too often but I've already had to replace it far too many times in the past few years simply because these newer phones are not made to last. It's expensive and wasteful to be constantly replacing phones especially when someone falls victim to the new aggressively advertised phone that just came out when their old one was working just fine. We need to think more about what we really need in order to be provided for over what we think we want and don't have. Corporate idealism (the advertising industry) probably won't help us understand what we need but rather what we could have and probably don't actually need. Our views on products and services shouldn't be too affected by the number of times we see a logo or add; if anything, the more we see it, the more it should be recognized as a red flag. Also, most advertisements seem to try to give the general public a false perception of reality; there's no way to really know if the people smiling really big in that SUV commercial actually live that way or if they are just actors who drove to that SUV commercial gig in their old warn out volkswagen.
Our happiness seems to have very little to nothing to do with how valuable our material possessions may be or how many of them we have, but rather our experiences with other people aside from anything material. Our happiness is totally dependent on all the other people in our lives. Sometimes we get caught up in this idea that we need to climb the economic ladder and achieve some higher form of material wealth yet most people who are stuck in that mentality almost never seem to feel satisfied with wherever they are; it's very individualistic/materialistic and only seems to divide us if anything.
If consumers gradually started putting their money into smaller companies that aren't affiliated with slave-wage-labor-created-by-large-companies-producing-goods-that-aren't-made-to-last, and started supplying themselves with resources that are made to last, we still could have everything we need to be provided for without needing to replace everything so often - if we start doing that collectively, that would change everything. Things would have to change. But it seems inevitable that most consumers will continue to fuel money into the current corrupt system of overproduction as they are presently doing because the separation between producers and consumers within society is so great that most consumers are not always aware of what actually goes into creating their resources that they need in order to survive which seems to be the root of most socioeconomic issues. We can at least start by spreading awareness and putting extra thought into where we will buy our next meal. We can start our own garden. We can go to the local farmers market. We can purchase household necessities that are made to last. We can recycle and reuse what we already have available to us. We can donate our neglected personal belongings to those who are in need of them, collectively, instead of throwing them away or having them pile up in our houses.
Our current system of production really only seems to benefit a small minority of people, (considering the fact they they own nearly half the wealth in the United States) and not society at large. If this system continues to dominate our lives as it has been, then things are going to get progressively worse. We need resources, not profiting billionaires. There comes a point where money has no value: when our freedom to access non-genetically modified food has been taken from us, when the last tree has been cut down, and the last stream poisoned, perhaps only then will they realize we can't eat money.