Your headline is spot on. As an avowed Luddite, my argument has always been that technology should serve us, not we serving technology. Capitalism drives an unrelenting upgrade cycle because profit, not need, not even productivity, frankly. Each Microsoft upgrade does not make me more productive. Human need has not changed that much over the centuries.

Also, regarding the Hawking quote, we need to stop using the term redistribution, it's a capitalistic term that’s simply inaccurate. We need to use a term like correct distribution. Stagging inequity, and rewarding those for simply having capital or luck, creating excessive unearned income, and not sharing gains with labor is a sign of incorrect distribution. So, redistribution plays into capitalism, by saying we have to take from one to lift another up. No. With correct distribution we lift up everybody, and there's still plenty for people with ideas and capital to profit handsomely.

I wrote about correct distribution in the context of reparations here.