That seems like a major stretch. Really feels like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here, like saying that a video about improved airbags means that nobody will care about safer road design anymore.
Isn't really teens in garages perpetuating this is it though, its universities and companies milking government funding.
It's extremely cynical to view it as "people pretend to care", rather than looking around and realizing there's a ton of important problems out there that the caring is distributed over. People care about disabilities, but they also care about war, about public schooling, about the environment, about feminism, about animal rights, about transparency in government, about road safety, about child well-being, about unemployment, and so on. All of these are important things, and of course there are dozens more that I haven't listed.
And inventions are sometimes actually useful. Sure, most of those prototypes will go nowhere, but every once in a while something that really helps is invented. And you can't predict in advance only the ones that will actually go on to help.
This is an excellent summary of the sort of anti-tech thinking that I strongly disagree with. Caring about people with Alzheimer's is well and good, but what we actually want are vaccines and cures.