I think the author is encouraging out of the box thinking. The framing of "inevitable" is a box (an assumption) that we can include in our analysis or judgment, rather than assume it to be true.

But to your point, his debate analogy does imply that tech enthusiasts are arguing in bad faith in order to win an argument, because the goal of winning a debate has no good faith aspect to it (good faith in debate terms is seeking the truth, bad faith is winning an argument).

But just because he is wrong doesn't mean he isn't useful.