> My interpretation is that the author is being cautious for new technologies, and suggesting to only embrace them if they actually add value.
There were a chapter about that at the end of the textbook for my digital logic class at Caltech in the early '80s. The chapter was called something like "The Engineer as Dope Pusher".
It gave an example of clothes dryers. The way most clothes dryers worked at the time is that you told them how long to run and how hot to get. The how hot to get part was a simple selector switch. The how long to run part has handled with a simple mechanical timer. You turned the dial until it pointed to the number of minutes you wanted on the label, started the dryer, the timer ticked down, and when it reached zero the dryer stopped.
Those timer mechanism designs were several decades old. They were mass produced, very reliable, very cheap, and when one did break the repairperson could easily replace it. If they didn't have the specific one for your dryer in their truck, or even one from the same manufacturer, no problem. One from a different manufacturer would probably work. The mounting brackets might not match but it was easy for the repairperson to rig something to make it work.
There dryers were extremely easy for users. Select temperature, turn knob to the time you want, press start.
But they are also boring for the dryer designers. So there were dryer designers out there, the author said, who were starting to design their new dryers with digital timers.
Digital was exciting. The engineer got to play with microprocessors which were new at the time. They got to design printed circuit boards, a power supply for the digital electronics, a display, a keypad for input. They got to play around with programming the microprocessor.
But to the consumer that digital dryer control wasn't better. It didn't offer any functionality that the mechanical timer interface did not. It had a much worse interface usually. It was less reliable. It cost more, and it broke the consumer was looking at a more expensive repair. That repair would probably take much longer because the repairperson probably would not have a new controller in their truck
The point was that the engineer should not let their desire to play around with new and fun things take priority over delivering the best solution for the user.