If that's been your experience of programming either:
1. You're doing it wrong.
2. You work for some sort of agency / programmer-for-hire outfit where you never work on the same project for longer than a few weeks or months.
I'm not old enough to know for sure, but I'm pretty certain people said the same thing about the Internet, Rock & Roll, TV, Radio, and the Telephone. Meh.
Absolutely. The diplomacy that goes on behind closed doors does so for a reason. Politics tends to shift the focus to the irrational side (just look at the current state of political discourse in the US). If we had access to other nation's documents like these, I think the US would look downright saintly (or at least no worse).