Rob,
1. I think you are going overboard to the polar opposite of the 'obsession with technical issues' that you are criticizing.
There's no way that I would be interested in going back to the days of film with heavy, bulky MF, or Large Format cameras. I recall in the 1980's I lost interest in photography for a while, until a colleague in the Public Service where I was working, brought to my attention a new Pentax camera that had an autofocus system.
Since I'd experienced some difficulty with the slowness and/or inaccuracy of manual focus with moving subjects, I decided to buy the revolutionary Pentax ME F, and my interest in Photography was renewed. My interest continued as Photography progressed into the digital world, making it possible to process the RAW data on a desktop computer,
2. instead of inside a smelly and unnatural Dark Room.
3. However, I do understand if one's main motivation in Photography is to imitate 'art', taking street photographs that look like a Manet painting, then issues of resolution, dynamic range, fast and accurate autofocus, are not particularly relevant.
4. But what might be relevant is the focal length range of the lens attached to the camera, and its weight.
1. Those words are not mine; they are a part of a complete feature from which that you have selected a part... That said, I agree with the guy in his overview about the equipment junkie mindset: it solves nothing for you if you do it in order to improve your abilty as photographer. Sharp snaps were made in the past, too, decades before af was invented. That said, af helped me a great deal too during the period when I had cataracts, especially before I knew that they were my problem. But all I needed was the central af spot as in my old Nikon cameras - the D200 and D700. I have never even tried using the other af areas -why would I? Simple is best.
2. I never had such problems with a darkroom; if anything, it was a nice place to get away from everything and concentrate on the work. But then, I was ever a bit of a loner. The lightroom, for want of a better word, has altered the game completely, and brough dishonesty to the fore. At a stroke, it ruined the belief in good photographers. For all we know today, we might just be looking at good tech guys saving both the day and the ass of some celebrity snapper who never learned how to do it properly. I still admire good photographers, but less so manipulation heroes. Shit, even I can do some of that kind of stuff. Good photography depends on seeing pictures, not messing about for hours later trying to make something out of rubbish.
3. That's one pleasant part of photographic art, but not the whole of it. Resolution is always a factor because you never know the future of a picture (why I stopped making cellpix), but unless you are also a commercial creature, it makes no real difference. Dynamic range is mainly a digital awareness problem; films like the slower Kodachromes and Velvia always did have limited DR, and folks just learned how to use them properly. The real problem that these things offer today is that digital can't cope with burned out highlights in the same pleasant manner as could film: the effects of over exposure are so ugly with digital.
Also, it appears to me that many people today talk a lot about af and accuracy, yet still shoot the majority of their pix with medium apertures of around f8 or so, where af is largely immaterial because of the natural DOF.
4. Yes, that is absolutely the case. And weight is why I no longer bother with a tripod.
I wish that I had a camera that looked like an M3 and weighed no more, but was actually an slr with a pentaprism. I know, impossible.
;-)