The real ques is: What % of the population are willing to be the "early adopters"? I wonder how things will develop in countries where that % is less than 5.
Status is relative. Going with the dating analogy:
Girls who are into IT will view Zuckerberg as higher status vs. Brad Pitt.
A girl who's into acting acting will view Brad Pitt as more 'high status' than Zuckerberg.
I think you may have confused "modern society" with TechCrunch/other mainstream tech publications. If this was a politics community, someone would probably say that "modern society considers Biden" as someone with the highest-status role.
I think we under-appreciate the role of context when we talk about status.