this also begs the question, if that's what things will look like later, why don't they look that way already?

Take that argument to genetic evolution via natural selection:

if you want to predict what future [organisms] will look like, a viable approach could be to examine this present-day [organisms] which do the [best adaptation to the current environment], and figuring out what lets them do that.

It's that memes are slow to change and cannot be forced to change much faster by active effort.