This is quite interesting. I work in technology, I write software, I run systems, I'm in the thick of it, living in a world of abstraction build on abstraction.
It gets tiring.
I love hopping on my '75 John Deere bike at the end of the day with it's friction shifters and simple everything -- nothing gets in the way of understanding what the machine is doing while you're at the controls.
I love getting in my '81 Pickup, knowing that the clutch pedal has a solid mechanical connection to the clutch, that the gas pedal yanks a wire, which opens the throttle plate with allows the engine to pull in more air, and with it the requisite amount of fuel, tuning the radio with a knob and needing to retune every-so-often as the signal strength changes.
One of the difficulties I see all the time in my industry is people wanting to throw technology at a problem because "Technology is modern!". Of course there can be efficiencies gained by supplementing exiting processes with technology. But if your process is broken in the first place, technology can really only make it break more efficiently.
As such there are three professional maxims I abide by:
1) If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
2) Keep it Simple.
3) Sometimes the exact right thing to do is nothing at all.