I mean every child since the invention of the telephone has thought that some kind of camera phone would be a pretty cool future invention. There's nothing really impressive about that statement. It was made at a time when telephone was everywhere and television was exploding in popularity in post ww2 America (flush with cash for the first time in 20yrs).

you'll get in total strangers personal cars and they'll drive you around, because they decided to be like a taxi that day.

That's kind of like saying humans always dreamed of flight, so it wasn't interesting when General Doolittle talked about space travel.

Even if it were true that everyone is visionary, I think the historical interest is in an industry leader talking about developments that were still 60+ years away, not a kid reading Dick Tracy or Superman comic strips where these kinds of gadgets were a plot device. Further, this prediction is much closer to reality than news stories we were seeing in the 80's or 90's about the coming convenience of table-top videphone consoles.

Another version of the article gave a little more context about the development of transistors and compact technology:

I'm not trying to downplay the amazingness of technological advances or of the smartness of a dude running a telecom company in the 50s.
But 'this' (current screen addiction you seem to be pointing to) is all computer driven imo, not phone driven. I take far more 'phone' calls on my work laptop than my cell phone but I use both devices for internet and email far more than for making calls. The reason smart phones were 'stickier' as a product and much more widely adopted than the previous generation flip phones is because they transformed the device from primarily something you used only for making calls and checking messages and texting to a handheld computer that you're constantly on.