It’s not an unheard of comparison (hell, George Lucas made it quite blatantly) but Neal Stephenson gets there in an odd way. It’s like the article starts out being about one thing, but by the end, it’s a political statement.
There could be some merit to the idea that the American dream is to be able to “veg out”, but Stephenson’s conclusion assumes that eventually no one will want to “geek out”. We’ve still got plenty of geeks…people who find vegging out boring. I, personally, prefer a mix of both.
Because of that, while I found the majority of the article somewhat interesting, the ending smacked to me of yet another doomsday-for-America prophecy.
You know, the kind of tired rhetoric that people who hate America can veg out to ;>