Regarding the "black-box delusion", it's not just you. You see a magician do a trick, and it's amazing. Then he explains how it is done, and the excitement vanishes. Oh, that's all it is, no big deal.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and who knows what wonders magic might accomplish? But once you understand the "trick", it's obvious that it can't do much more than what it's doing. Oh, well. The magic is gone.