Buffet is dead-on, as he often is. Since antiquity gold has been seen as valuable, but until the space age that value has just been guarding the hole. Gold has many interesting properties for a technically advanced culture. First, it's non-reactive. It will never oxidize. Ever. Gold is eternal. Which wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't also an incredible conductor of electricity. Couple that with gold's ability to be hammered out to about 1 molecule of thickness, and you've got a metal for the Space Age.

Still, in our culture the value of gold is still stuck in the Dark Ages, just based on our fixation with the "Bling" aspect of it. Which is ironic, since it never had any true value until the where it started to be decoupled from currency.