In the 70s/80s, the jobs that were available to you were basically what your family member could "get you in". I am of that age and I remember General Motors was a great place to work at that time. My friend "got in" after high school because his father was a union boss. For me, "getting in" to General Motors was literally impossible because I had no connections.
I was into 90s cyberpunk and the problem was the ideas were basically all wrong about the internet. Or maybe we could have gone in another direction with the internet but didn't.
The main difference overall though is in the past life was incredibly boring. It was so boring people had to invent all these cultural activities to escape the disconnected, mind numbing boredom of existence.
Life today is just much more interesting regardless of finances so there isn't the motivation to hang out at goth bar once a week.
It is an even more human reaction when the new strange thing directly threatens to upend and massively change the industry that puts food on your table.
The steam-powered loom was not good for the luddites either. Good for society at large in the long term but all the negative points that a 40 year old knitter in 1810 could make against the steam-powered loom would have been perfectly reasonable and accurate judged on that individual's perspective.
You just have to use Claude Code for a few days and it will be obvious. Cursor may as well go out of business to me and I really loved it a few weeks ago.
Once you figure out the work flow, Claude Code is just insane.
Imagine that, people make up bullshit that isn't grounded in reality. Who would have thought!