You're missing the point: anyone can claim they "invented" the flying car or 2-way wrist radio. So looking back at 1919 and saying the "idea" of a pocket phone was profound is as silly as the guy who claims he invented email because he was the first one to use the word.
It isn't a "criticism" that he didn't realize the device.
As for the social implications: so what? Survivor Bias / Hindsight Bias going on here. There were probably a lot of predictions made in 1919 that never panned out.
I'm not missing the point, I'm disagreeing with it. Sometimes ideas are insightful and this seems like one of those to me. It's OK that we disagree about that. It's too easy to just paint all ideas as trivial because there's lots of them. That seems silly to me.
It isn't a "criticism" that he didn't realize the device.
As for the social implications: so what? Survivor Bias / Hindsight Bias going on here. There were probably a lot of predictions made in 1919 that never panned out.