And it's a legitimate criticism of the books. Fidelity to substance of the original is one thing, execution is another. I think the weaknesses of the books as transposed to film, combined with poor execution of craft are what make one different from the other.
Isn't that kind of appropriate, though? You create a world where there are enormous technological and sociological forces that are outside of your characters' control, and those forces change who the characters are. That's a big part of the point.
It's about characters, technology trends and plot details that are a thousand times more specific. The execution of it is bad, and it's only through extremely lazy equivocation that those two things can be said to be the same.
That's exactly how the books are. Cool concept, but there's barely any plot, nobody has any real motivation, things just happen to them.