I think we are in the age of too many options, distractions and the suffering. When you are under that sort of the problems, you end up making more or less suffering in the grand scheme of things. In that sense it'd be reasonable to say that the current and upcoming generation would live much better life than any previous humans did. I suppose the thing is that we would be influencing each others life more than in the past. Due to information flow.
RE: Not Enough Smallsteps