[jdmdmdmdmd]

My mind immediately went to Forster as well:

>They wondered if such devices would seal off the wonders of technology into a black box: “effortless, opaque, and therefore unquestioned by consumers.”

rings true to me. I think this was and still is a valid concern. At the very least it's a real trade-off. I almost get the feeling that the author in the OP looks down on the knowledge needed to understand machines/technology since it can be replaced by a button. That misses the point entirely though. Taking technology for granted makes you a mindless consumer in my opinion. That's why we're so instinctively disgusted by the population in The Machine Stops. They don't exist in any real sense; they're just the exit nodes of the machine's functions.