Nowadays, most discussion & thoughts about tech are far more ambivalent & concerned than they used to be. What hope & optimism there is often feels shallow & vapid. Doubt & questions & concerns seem well justified & rampant. Few individuals seem like they are a driver seat- it feels like tech is steering it's own ship and the "where do you want to go" idea, the personal computing idea, is way way way way outmoded & most tech is now us, in the hands of far greater powers that shape what tech will be.
I adore Nolan's writing & thoughts, but to cast himself as an outsider & cantankerous & a crank is not how I read the tea-leaves of society today.
There's very little shiny promising & exciting on the horizon. What progressive technology camps there are tend to have their faith in weird cult-like high high high tech AI, Blockchain, Quantum or other deeply beyond mortal reach technologies. Most mainstream tech has had a shadow but that underbelly's visibility has grown greatly & dissatisfaction & untrustability- conservative, fear based minsets- have quite justifiably exploded in adoption. Almost no where is there a practical progressive view of technology as a can-do adaptable system that we all can use to shape & guide ourselves, our lives, our way of communicating, and our way of thinking.
I for one have unbounded optimism, but it's because I think it would be very easy to start doing for ourselves. I think our assessments are quite real, quite good, I think we understand how dastardly so many of the traps we've fell into are, begun to deeply comprehend the dangers of superficial low-agency software systems & "creator" economics. We're getting enormously better at information tech, even though we're still not using it for anything remotely empowering or good. But some day we'll start to, and we'll get better fast at personal computing, once we start to see & realize what progressive, positive computing basis could possibly look like.