>The idea that modern annoyances (sitting in traffic, waiting in checkout lines, searching/browsing for information) are somehow essential to the human experience is super weird given that most of these things have only been around for 50ish years in their current form and less than 1,000 years in any form.

There two ways (at least) that the argument can still be perfectly valid:

1) Recentness or not doesn't matter. Women vote and no slavery/segregation are also recent things that have also "only been around for 50ish years" (or close enough), but one would presumably still consider them essential.

2) The gist of the argument is probably not about those particular annoyances per se, but about having annoyances (or non-optimizations or room for error, etc) in general (all of which are driven away by technology).