I haven't finished the article yet and am currently reading it. But FWIW I'll just park this howler from the first paragraph here:

> "prophesying what innovations are to come"

No. Prophesy is the ability to see or correctly guess the future - a future that would have happened without the prophecy.

Christopher Hitchens nailed it absolutely when he noted that science fiction is rarely prophetic, rather it's taken as a blueprint for post-facto design. It is self-fulfilling, influential fiction.