The reason they have to manipulate the audience is because people look for validation and so feel good when other people react to things in the same way as them. If another equally funny show has a laugh track and you don’t, yours will likely be less enjoyable to watch unless it’s a specific form of humour which benefits from not having a laugh track.
Basically a laugh track can’t save a terrible show, but it can manipulate people into finding a mediocre show more enjoyable to watch, but a mediocre show will make people laugh organically at least a few times anyway.
I doubt society will go fully paperless, there are times when you need a thing that can be crushed, folded, whatever and doesn’t run out of battery, so unless e-ink technology develops in a very specific way I don’t think every eventually will be replaced, and even without purely functional applications I think art would never ever go fully paperless for many data security (leaking art before it’s complete), economic (things are more expensive when they’re limited in supply, and making either legal or illegal copies of digital things is so much easier) and sentimental reasons (it’s just nicer to have something physical) reasons