CHI has been a pretty big tent (and it's gotten to be a big conference) from the beginning and has always had a strong social/psych contingent. I believe the author is from such a background, so "papers I wish I wrote" is going to be skewed towards those kinds of contributions.

But there have been and still are plenty of what I would technical papers; just skimming the program there were sessions on pose/gesture tracking, haptics, VR, and of course zillions of AI things.