The differences? Speed, size, storage or load, or just plain work-load, between ‘modern,’ and trad. technology is probably easiest to compare. We tend to think of communication tech, and computation tech when we say ‘modern,’ but traditional? Lets define that just a bit. Are we talking machines and devices, or the uses themselves, like fire from rubbing two sticks together to fire from an ‘electronic,’ cigarette lighter?Some things are just novelties. There are times when cheap, non electronic devices provide practical and very necessary service in places where an electronic device is too high-maintenance to be equally practical. There is no need to put a computer on a well pump if you’re in a back-water where electronic replacement parts are hard to come by. You just hand pump the thing and it works fine and at your convenience. Certain ‘Green,’ tech, like solar ovens, are a far cry from a fire pit, or even a gas barbecue, and though it’s marketed as ‘new’ technology, depending of course on design and materials used, it is very low-tech. Useful technology seems really only cosmetically changed, with new clothes over old bones, so-to-speak. A different package, a different color, but it’s the job it does that matters. The best comparison between ‘modern,’ tech and ‘traditional,’ tech that springs to mind though, is that modern tech is very modular and if it breaks it’s often disposable, rather than fixable, for most of us.