This is exactly the point he addresses in his final paragraph. Efficiency is great, but up to a point, and we've passed it.
Most of today's innovations are not freeing up people's time on the scale that the washing machine or dishwasher did. On the contrary, many of them are using up time without any productivity gains. Smartphones and Facebook have not improved any other part of the economy besides their own.
There's a point where more automation does not mean things become easier.
Let's take the same dishwasher example. Of course it saves a lot of time for a family of four, for example. Pop it in and you're done.
But for example, for a single person, this makes much less sense. Because the time it takes for putting it in the dishwasher, waiting to fill the machine and running the cycle is longer than just washing the damn dishes.
No automation is "free". And overautomation causes problems as well.
Well, the wall-clock time may be longer, but the human time is much shorter. As long as you have one meal's worth of slack in the amount of crockery you have, the dishwasher wins by a country mile in the amount of effort expended.
Most of today's innovations are not freeing up people's time on the scale that the washing machine or dishwasher did. On the contrary, many of them are using up time without any productivity gains. Smartphones and Facebook have not improved any other part of the economy besides their own.
Edit: See this interview which makes the point very well https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/robert-gordon-inter...