I guess we've been here before.  Well "we" is a constantly shifting pronoun.
Here is: Feeling like there is no tomorrow, at least not for humanity.
Feeling that we fucked things up so bad and we're racing at top speed in the
wrong direction to our inevitable doom.
We is: Well, depends on the particular instance of "Here".  Maybe it was the
Jews during Nazism, maybe it was the Romans during the reigns of Caligula or
Nero.  Maybe it was a random Gen-X'er in the mid west when America died.

I know, I'm making the same mistake people always make.  I'm extrapolating from
a particular point on a curve, out on a tangent; a straight line to doom.

But, it has brought back to my mind a thought that I've had in and out of my
consciousness over a few years.  Humanity has probably brought itself to the
brink of extinction before, could very well be doing it right now, and will
likely do it again.  We build up, we advance (technologically, not so much in
ways that actually matter).  We let psychopaths ruin everything because they're
charming, tall, and know just the right words to say and just the right smile
to keep us regular folks enchanted.

(not that our current crop of psychos are particularly charming, far from it)

Each time we reset we forget the hard learned lessons.  We were *just* 
beginning to stand on our own free of the crutches of superstition.  We were 
just beginning to unlock the secrets of the universe, maybe even finding 
fellow life in our own back yards on the icey moons of the outer gas giants 
(maybe).

We were just beginning to communicate to each other in a direct, meaningful, 
and instantanous way, building a global mind.  But, this was Internet 1.0 when
we used personal web sites, IRC, mailing lists, usenet.  Sure there was a lot
of stupid people saying stupid things but at least it was we talking to we not
feeding like pigs from the algorithm driven, for profit, corporate run, centralized, 
troughs of the MOTHER FUCKING PSYCHOS THAT KEEP RUINING IT FOR EVERYONE!

But now I'm feeling that it's more likely there'll be a reset.  In the  
distant future, maybe,  the earth will have a fraction of the people and they will live without
computers, cell phones, electricity, or even the knowledge of how any of that
shit works.

If we really reset. like *REALLY*, to where we once again feel like we *just*
got here for the first time, we're in the garden of eden and God must have 
put us here and we are just starting to think with our frontal lobes.  Then
we yet again have to go through all that religious crap, all those holy wars,
all those SAME FUCKING ASSHOLES playing middleman between you and "God" and 
therefore taking control, yet again.

If only there was some way to leave a manual, a book, a video, a hologram, some
way to communicate to this future reimplementation of humanity to get them over
the dark ages quickly, or even skip huge parts of it.  

But how?  What language will they speak?  Something new they'll have to invent.
What if one of *THOSE* guys (it's almost always guys) finds the book and 
uses it to control the masses.  How do we ensure the knowledge is made available
to all, understood by all?

Making it comprehensible: Pictograms maybe?
Making it globally available: A ring system orbiting the earth?  A projection
in the sky that no one can hide?
Certainly that would only support the idea of a god, since he left a message 
in the heavens for his children.  Even if a part of the message is "There is
no God, we are your ancestors, we fucked up.  Don't fuck up like we did."

Yeah I know this sounds like I'm ripping off some concepts from Asimov but 
you'll just have to take my word for it that these ponderings came to me 
before I found out about "Foundation".
.