> After reviewing the trends, Smil introduces a surprising and counterintuitive idea he calls relative dematerialization. As innovation lets us make a given product more efficiently, with fewer materials or energy, prices go down and consumption goes up.

Looks like Gates isn't very familiar with the ideas of Buckminster Fuller then. Bucky identified ephemeralization as a key technological trend over 70 years ago. [1]

[1] R. Buckminster Fuller, Nine Chains to the Moon, Anchor Books [1938] 1971 pp. 252–59.