In this century the term "social capital" has become popular. (For some reason I can't embed the ngram viewer from Google, so you'll just have to take my word for it.)
The idea is that people accumulate relationships and knowledge which improve the functioning of society. It's a positive term.
The other side of the coin is seeing much the same phenomena as "the dead weight of the past", as Marx did in this quote. Or, as Lincoln wrote: " The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."
One example from my lifetime: Germany and Japan recovered relatively quickly from the destruction of WWII partly because they had social captial. Their people had knowledge, and they had institutions which could operate. In the last century that was often compared with the situation in developing countries, where the people lacked the knowledge and the institutions.
However I can look at the other side of the same example: much of the social capital of pre-WWII Japan and Germany was useless or dangerous in the post-war situation. They had to discard some and keep and exploit other aspects.
I think we're finding the same thing as we exploit algorithms in automation--the algorithms are based on past experience, so they reflect the past, both good and bad.
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