Thank you Centaurus, that was excellent!
I have some times flown aircraft equipped with flight directors, but I have never used one. The pilots who mentored my instrument flying spent more time covering some up, or turning them off, rather than indulging me in more technology.
We spend a lot of certification effort standardizing cockpits - instrument position, and appearance, standardizing control location, motion, effect and knob shape, all to reduce workload, and possible task saturation. Then, we introduce a whole suit of new systems, which the marketing guys will tell you makes the plane more foolproof, and easy to fly, but really takes away from the standardization, and introduces confusion to all but the most familiar pilot.
Even in the most early days of VFR GPS, the only buttons you could depend upon for having a common function to all other brands of GPS were the "direct" D with arrow through, and "enter". Seemingly, all other buttons were different brand for brand. When I used to ferry lots of fancy GA aircraft, you'd get one comm working for you, and spend the first hour or two of the flight figuring out everything else!
The tech guys will design more fancy stuff, and tell us how safe it will make flying, the owner want's the flashiest plane and panel, so he'll buy and install it. The pilot wants to push the buttons on the new box, so the basics of flying the plane fall by the wayside - and that's what must always be the most safe, instinctive skill!