I grew up watching Star Trek and its replicators ("Tea, Earl Grey, Hot"). So a core part of me is excited about this ideal future world where we wouldn't need to work to sustain ourselves, but would be free to use our time to explore the universe, or learn, or make art, or manage a vineyard.
To me this vision of us being able to do whatever we want, while machines are available to take care of our necessities, to the extent we chose to rely on them, is almost heaven-like.
And for a prehistoric context, according to researchers such as James Suzman, earlier in human history, we were a lot closer to this ideal than we are now [0].
Chief O'Brien is the underappreciated hero of Star Trek making Picard's lifestyle possible. I'm happy to see his hard work, often crawling on all fours in awkward spaces, got highlighted more in DS9.
Or in other words, there were no automatic maintenance machines in the Star Trek universe at the time, it was all handwork still. Manufacturing and food prep was done by machines which solves some part of it I suppose.
To me this vision of us being able to do whatever we want, while machines are available to take care of our necessities, to the extent we chose to rely on them, is almost heaven-like.
And for a prehistoric context, according to researchers such as James Suzman, earlier in human history, we were a lot closer to this ideal than we are now [0].
[0] https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-human...