A lot of programmers were very critical how in particular since the release of the iPhone people suddenly accepted the golden cage against which programmers before very aggressively fought.

So the issue is rather that people did not listen to these old-school programmers, (as usual) mocked these as nerds, and instead listened to "hipsters" and marketers.

One can discuss a lot how useful humanities are, but what brought us in the current situation is rather that the masses did not listen to the old-school programmers.

I think it is more a problem of not caring (especially when not caring will result in social and/or economic reward) rather than not anticipating.

For any technology that is created you can and should anticipate that it will be, literally, weaponized since there are hundreds of thousands of years of precedent for this happening.