Technology, is it really better?

Technology, is it really better? The reason I ask is because in the last week two of my friends cars have developed "issues", they havent broken down as such but in both case the cars computers and telling them that theres a serious fault. Not a bad thing you say, it's telling you to get it mended before it actually breaks down, trouble is in a lot of these cases it's the computer that has the fault not the actual car.
This got me thinking back to my old Morris minor (a 1957 model) Apart from a major mechanical problem all the common easy bits that went wrong were fixable by the roadside with a few tools and a couple of cheap parts. A condenser, a fanbelt and a set of points would get you going, they were simple to fit (you could actually get at the engine) and you didn't need a hi-tech computer to plug-in to reprogram the bloody thing.
It worked fine for about a 100 years, then some bright spark (pun intended) decided to make things more complicated, now when your car goes tits up by the roadside your stuck, no chance of fixing it yourself, and god help if you have to buy a new "black box" for it.
You can pay a fortune, not a few pounds like the part for the old Morris. I know somebody who paid over £2000 for a new enging managment chip... well they would have but the car only cost them that so they gave up and scrapped it. Ands thats making things better?????