Nice perspective. Won't summarise here, it'll be better for people to read/skim themselves (30 seconds), but in general the concept holds true.
Does this mean we could save years of tougher work by doing things manually? Is non-hacking going to become the next trend?
I really believe so. I think it's essential to do a lot of manual work first. To shake every potential customer's hand to be figure out a way to get to product market fit. And only once we reached that product market fit and a critical mass, might technology (and growth hacks) help us reach that next level. Paul Graham wrote a brilliant article about this: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html