> I am criticising the argument “every past apocalyptic prediction was wrong, therefore this future apocalyptic prediction is wrong”

That is not the argument being made. That is the straw man version you are presenting. Read the full paragraph, and the one after, and it's obvious:

> There are myriad policy responses. Whatever we do, those responses will require popular consent and careful deliberation. No one person, or one company, or one movement, knows the answer and history is no guide, save that apocalyptic predictions about new technologies have, to date, all been wrong.

> History does provide a great deal of guidance, however, about the use and misuse of government power. It tells us that the state is in fact likely the worst possible custodian for the most powerful publication and data analysis technologies.

Emphasis mine.

“History is a guide to apocalyptic predictions in only one way: all previous apocalyptic predictions have been wrong”

“History is a guide to state abuses of power in many ways, and most of them point in the same direction, that it is a very bad idea to invest powers like these with the state”

These are two separate arguments. I am sympathetic to the latter and endorse it essentially as written, which is why I didn’t criticise it. My criticism of the former is not a metonymic dismissal of every other argument in the piece.