Icyseeker said:
Like all technology it is essentially a neutral agent without action
But this is false. Technology demands ressources to be created and the way it is created is the result of a certain view of the world. They are people who think we can always extract the good of things, that we could have night with no obscurity and eternal growth. This ideals belong to the realms of abstraction but cannot be imprinted on the world. What they assertate doing so most essentially is that we not only can but outright need to control our environements and reshape them to our own image.
Internet and smartphone still is a delirious idea, nothing has changed from what it was then and what it is now. A self made bubble where we lock ourselves up. The computer is the latest update in a view of the world with man at it's center: a flat surface with a light that exist only for us. Pretty Moyen Age actually. A telephone can make you hear the voice of someone on the other side of the planet. Wow, great. Being stripped of body and context surely makes one feel free. Not limited by the silly flesh ! Yes, to be totally disconnect from your immediate reality. Far from the trouble of everyday life, like the sage having reached enlightenment in his cave. You can spend your days listening to people from the other side of the world and learn, share, expand beyond any limitations and boundaries. You are all powerful and ubiquious. Yepee.
But yeah, obviously something that is gratifying to us will present benefits, like aristocrats benefit from the labor of those below them or the oil industry from ruining the planet.
Still, Elon Musk is far from alone in his delusion of grandeur and narcisism, it's the entirety of society that has been swallowed by the mirrors it created. The places that exist untouch are but a few, and those who have been in contact with the "virus" can no longer escape, as the space they have started inhabiting can be accessed from any other place, it stays unchanged to the passage of time. A little heaven for dried souls.
Really, cyberpunk stories are warning, not advertising of where to put money for vacation. If you think Akira or (more directly speaking here) Paprika were praising you need a good rewatch. As does the Head of Tesla it so seems.