Thiel would agree with your main statements. He's said before that he's not particularly worried about advancements in computers continuing to unfold and the p

Thiel would agree with your main statements. He's said before that he's not particularly worried about advancements in computers continuing to unfold and the potential for the Net to become ever more like a planet wide nervous system with many more use cases coming into existence. His complaint is that if progress does not occur in fields outside of computation there will be stagnation. No amount of computational intelligence can mine asteroids or convert the Sahara to arable land without doing something with the material world. You can have rapid improvements in specific technologies in the midst of a general decline or a stagnation. For example; surely there a great deal of improvement in weapons systems during the middle ages. The stirrup, the crossbow, the gun, the cannon. Most of the advantages of those technologies didn't really help the average person's situation. This is not a hypothetical. While there was enormous increases in computational power in the past three - four decades median wages have not budged. People were able to consume more primarily due to debt. We ought to question whether computers will be enough to raise living standards in the developed world in the short to medium term (his main contention I think).