ok thoughtful response incoming:
The problem is the value set of the 90s critic is different to the 00s-2010s punter. For 90s critics, on both sides of the spectrum, be that jungle or ambient/'intelligent' techno, the future was at stake (not just musically but culturally.) We lived that future that the 90s windbags harped on about, and far from being either dystopian or utopian, it was all too boring. Capitalism has not managed to really pioneer anything above the smartphone in the last 15 years, which makes the accelerationists look a bit dim witted. Capitalism is accelerating, but only in terms of numbers and fictitious currency, not in terms of any great seismic or cultural innovation. Even musically the cataclysmic innovations in production technology were mostly over by 2002 (this is different to k-punks argument about electronic music not sounding like the future, I'm talking about the actual technology.) All the algorithmic automation that people are fretting about is just an amplification of computer processing power and a development that was already under way well into the 60s - the proletarianisation of the peasantry and their divorce from their household subsistence economies in the developing countries. For me the question was never is jungle or techno futuristic - I think free jazz is in many ways more mutable and hence more reflective of the future (jungle is ultimately dj mix music and as mind bending as its peak was, it always had to appeal to the mundane present.) But how the future is contextualised and recontextualised.
When Stockhausen was shown the music of Aphex, Richie Hawtin etc, of course his post-african repetitions comment was racist, but not because he didn't understand either African music or techno (he understood both) and he was right that IDM (and jungle for that matter) producers take a small segment of an African rhythm and loop it, but in traditional African music you will have multiple rhythms in multiple timings sprawling and evolving past each other. For instance the best moroccan gnawa is actually always changing. No, Stockhausen was racist precisely because he absolutely hated music as an ambience, and thought good music absolutely refused to make any concessions to anything other than the intellect. Both IDM and jungle for him would make concessions. IDM for him is precisely not real intellectual music because it's after party comedown gear.