This is a relevant question! Of course there is no single answer to this phenomenon but let's try to get close with hermeneutics and more questions as questions are much more interesting than cheap answers.
1. Could a customer/worker anticipate the outcome 20 years ago?
No. But we should have done.
Lets get a bit of distance and look at the bigger picture. When we built the Internet, it was a vision of a better world. A lot of still persistant problems would be solved. Industrialization had ripped families apart and unrooted people: workers had to go to a factory, would do some mindless and abstract work, and wouldn't see their children the whole day. Quite a lot of this could be done differently, more self-responsible, more decentralized, more sustainable, with the help of the Internet.
I'd say no. Nobody can foretell what will be in 20 years. So at least then they couldn't know.
Oh, you certainly can. Sure, a consumer/worker cannot, and is not supposed to, anyway. And sure you don't learn that skill at the evening school. But you can learn it - maybe at the Rosicrucians or the GoldenDawn (not sure of that, I never tried it), and certainly on the elite layer of any secret service.
When I held lectures about the Internet in the early 90's, I used to talk about the Internet-of-Things. That term wasn't coined then, it appeared much later, around 2010 - but nevertheless it was 100% obvious that this would come, only by understanding how the technlogy works.
And that is the way how you can indeed look into the future. But that is only the technology part. There is another important part: how people tend to behave. When concerning masses, this is rather well researched, it is called
PsyOps. (Again, you don't learn that at evening school.)
And that is the part which I did not look into - because I am mainly a Tech-Guy, I don't like manipulation, this is not my profession.
2. At what time did it get obvious, that some techs are growing to big-tech creating problems of the sort that has never been seen on earth?
It should have been obvious to me in 1990.
Even before then, I already knew for certain that this computer thing is not just a new technology fancy, but will transmute our societies to their roots. Only, I didn't look much closer.
Because at that time I still believed that the sociologists, psychologists etc. would have a better understanding of people. than I do. But they didn't even bother to look in that direction; they were busy trying to solve petty-problems like violence in families or whatever.
You need to get rid of the idea of generalizing people, considering them basically equal. People aren't equal, some have skills that others will never reach. So the question is: obvious to whom?
It was, to some extent, certainly obvious to the actors themselves. It should have been obvious, at least since 2000, to any shop that seriously does futurology. Which means, these accepted the situation knowingly.
3. Why do most people tend to ignore the big and dangerous problems and prefer to nitpick others with their small-minded findings?
Why do You?
You feel disgusted about the proceedings of these super-rich idiots, at the same time you critisize the cgit not being redundant. (Sorry for that)
It is always the easiest to be envious about those who get rich from our work, and demanding to those who tend to work for us.
4. Why do people buy on emotions and tend to ignore facts?
5. Why are men willing to take slavery like works when they have a hungry family to feed or satisfying a greedy wife?
That's at least two big buckets to open. Other question: why are people too lazy to build themselves a better world, even when you hand them the tooling?
Or more generally: At what point/range/situation do people start to ignore their own needs?
They don't. At the core there are only two programs: self-preservation and preservation of species.
"Panem et circenses" works quite well. Nobody will seriousely challenge the super-rich as long as that's provided.
a) when they are forced to by trying to survive?
b) when they feel secure and are free to choose among alternatives of equal value?
These questions should be tried to answer for oneself. It's meant more to start a process of thinking on a subjective individual basis. No one else can do that for you.
Okay.
So what is more important right now? Asking questions about the history or thinking what can be done now coping with problems that have become obvious?
Without the history you can't even correctly understand any problem.
