Language is a very good point
I wonder how this is in (the different) smaller language communities - there are of course always some words missing/forgotten that would be useful to describe, plan, and communicate about life at the edge (or margin?). And on the other hands “charged words” that basically restrict the frame in which certain things can be thought about. Very tricky business always, and far beyond my personal horizon [<-- another one of those] for the most part. But very important I think.
Re collapse: This is perhaps also one of them in some respects. I did not mean it in a “zombie apocalypse” way. More in a (slow) “Fall of Rome” way, where after 200 years you’d start wondering if you’re sitting in Byzantium (which held up much longer) or Rome. Most of the time it is just relatively slow business, many long meetings that don’t get shit done, and broken upper management. In terms of such “toned down” future spotting there are two useful sentences that often appear useful to me:
“The future is already here, it is just not distributed evenly.” (i.e. you just rearrange existing stuff) and “The future comes from behind.” (i.e. you think you’re heading in a certain direction (mostly based on narrative) and are typically blind to developments that come from somewhere else (often (willfully ignored) fact based). There is a related one which is: “Walking backwards into the future.” In my opinion it gives society too much agency in where it is going, through I like the image of being somewhat able to extrapolate future developments from looking at the past. I think that is a good point to start, but my perception is that most of the time what is called “history” is a horribly, horribly skewed, spotty, far too high level write-up of things for the majority of which we don’t even have words yet (not to speak of better forms of communication), because we only seriously started talking about the past since yesterday or so. But I am rambling. 
In short: Yup, I agree.
A funny thought though: What does it mean if we want to push collaboration, but then see us talking about autonomy? I think it is not mutually exclusive, but it is interesting none the less, no?