Spider seemed to be ahead of his time in his thinking on modern technological capitalism. It would be easy to categorise this as standard hippy thinking of the time, but I'm not sure it is. I think was perhaps it more thoughtful that that. Given his comments on our cultural addictions, our increasing need for immediate gratification and his specific questioning of the need for digital watches (new in 1976), one has to wonder what he would think of iPhones and snapchat! 
Spider's comments start here at 25:50.
He also starts to go on about a fella he thinks is telepathic, who runs a strange cult, so his monologue deviates into strange eccentricity in the middle, but it's not boring! So yeah, some of what he goes on about is nuts, but still.
Particularly I like his comments: "somehow I grew up in a culture where I absorbed the impression that the smart man avoids hard work; that hard work is for the suckers". Essentially he makes the point that modern western culture tells you you should strive and aim to be lazy. Lots of SF perpetuates this, with the invention of robots to do our mundane hard-work for us. We're still doing it in reality of course, more and more, so it was an interesting perspective from 1976. I tend to have the same thoughts about electric bicycles these days - what on earth is the point of an electric bike, when you ride for the exercise!
Spider's comments start here at 25:50.
He also starts to go on about a fella he thinks is telepathic, who runs a strange cult, so his monologue deviates into strange eccentricity in the middle, but it's not boring! So yeah, some of what he goes on about is nuts, but still.
Particularly I like his comments: "somehow I grew up in a culture where I absorbed the impression that the smart man avoids hard work; that hard work is for the suckers". Essentially he makes the point that modern western culture tells you you should strive and aim to be lazy. Lots of SF perpetuates this, with the invention of robots to do our mundane hard-work for us. We're still doing it in reality of course, more and more, so it was an interesting perspective from 1976. I tend to have the same thoughts about electric bicycles these days - what on earth is the point of an electric bike, when you ride for the exercise!
