There seem to be three main hypotheses in this article, and all seem wrong to me.
The first, raised in the context of development of the transistor and how it was stalled by WW2, is some notion of “future improvement motivation”. The author suggests that the transistor came about because the people involved wanted to improve the future.
I’d assert that the people involved wanted to improve switching speeds and reduce power requirements, and were driven by curiosity. That they changed the world was a side effect. A big one, but unintentional.
The second notion is bound into the idea of people being optimistic about the future and taking as its evidence that people are “investing” for future growth.
My take? A lot of people are afraid and uncertain and are looking desperately for a short term windfall, and some people fear they won’t have a job in X years so they might as well plow their money into whatever is rising.
The author’s position requires rational investors. We know the rational agent model is bunk.
The third questionable idea is that somehow the plague gave us usable time and that people are using this to their advantage. Sure, some may be, but most of us got anxiety, longer hours because work was more accessible (just down the hall) AND a refuge from plague fear and future fear and bad news, et al, etc.
What the author writes may be true for a small fraction of us. But not for most/all.
The term bubble may best describe where the author lives: in an optimistic, future-looking, rational place. Many of us may hope to live there, few of us do.