What a lot of people forget is that in the early days of Linux there was no software that targeted it. Everything you would want to run on Linux was intended to run on something else like Solaris, BSD, AT&T Sytem V, SCO, AIX or something else. As a result, Linux APIs were the most generic flavor of Unix possible. Almost every thing meant for a Unix would compile and run on it and there was rarely a dependency problem.
I still miss that.
We are already there. Just look at the state of society right now and observe the critical thinking and media literacy skills of the average person.
In the words of cyberpunk author Wiilam Gibson: “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.“