Actually, I think the OP misrepresented what Matt Cutts said here. Basically, Matt Cutts is letting all SEO's know that there is now a strong initiative to catch those that are trying to abuse the system (blackhatters). In fact, slide 14/25 is a good indication that Matt Cutts and Google certainly do not discourage SEO. It helps their search results when pages are optimized well for their algorathim to find the most relative sites.
Yes I agree with jhn2001 that some SEO is data entry, and that it's not that hard of a puzzle to figure out. Where did Matt Cutts say that SEO is spam? His words and slides in big bold letters say "SEO isn't SPAM."
Yeah, the worst part is that google will sooner or later move to a platform, where individual persons can choose their favorite answers and that creates overall results, which means that welcome quality websites or bots like tube increaser or etc.
thats right. OP should read the post more carefully and not jump into judgment looking at the word "spam"