No one can deny the advantages and benefits of digital technology, it would be foolish to say otherwise. But your comment is not just an idle observation. High tech is not a panacea for all problems, and in many cases, it simply gets in the way of getting things done.

It is one of the dirty little secrets of modern engineering that much of our vaunted technology is developed for strictly commercial reasons, and actually gets in the way more than it helps. In actual practice, we waste too much time debugging our tools instead of using them: modern engineers expend more effort solving their computer problems than in using computers to solve their problems. It goes without saying that there is a certain amount of justifiable "overhead" associated with any technology, hunting was easier with flint projectile points, even if we had to spend a lot of time making them and even longer learning how to make them. But the cost/benefit analysis show that, in this case, the overhead costs were certainly justified.

But the engineering mentality is not trained for, and rarely spends enough time in, actually analyzing how much effort it takes to apply a high-tech solution to a familiar problem, and fails to consider that this additional effort also has to be factored into the cost of the product. Often, it just isn't worth it.

It stands to reason that some tasks simply cannot be done without high tech. But for many others, particularly in management and administration, it may just add to the cost. Consider engineering products of the past and their total societal costs, (corrected for inflation, of course). I doubt we could afford to build the Panama Canal today, or the Pyramids, even if we restricted ourselves to the original specs.

The Canal is a fine example because it shows us how the engineering art is not purely one of throwing more technology (or money, or energy)at a problem. Before even the survey began, we had to first provide housing for the workers, which meant draining the swamps for mosquito control, and so on and so on. The engineering management was all done without word processing, photocopiers, spreadsheets or PowerPoint.

The finished product is a masterpiece not only of engineering, but of environmental management as well. The rain forest of Panama is an integral part of the system, forming a catchment reservoir of water which feed the lakes which provide the hydraulic energy which powers the locks. Erosion control was one of the key considerations on which the construction was conceived. In many ways, the Canal is solar-powered, a piece of Green engineering. Today, we would be tempted to do it with brute force, probably nuclear-powered pumps.

I've always loved the B-58. And it still holds several aviation speed records, as I recall. There's a lot than can be done with slide rules and pen-and-ink drawings. It got us to the moon, didn't it?