Human tech is already basically a heap of scrap metal that only works through sheer force of faith, so it makes sense that it would be compatible with ork tech.
Very little of human tech is actually unsophisticated (at least in terms of military stuff, simple things get usually manufactured the old way, not by STCs), which is a problem of itself.
It's my understanding that over-reliance on digital storage for records,
Books burn. Books rot away. Nothing else really has good storage capability.
These sites are strictly protected by the previously mentioned ultra-conservatives, who (mis)interpret what little they successfully recover, and destroy everything that does not fit their preconceived narrative about the glory and majesty of his royal flatulence, the god emperor of man. (you know, because "HERESY!")
Wrong. I mean, yes, that's what happens. But Mechanicus aren't anti-progress for the sake of it. People like to believe they're some backwards selfish assholes that slap dicks on buttons to make things go because they lost all the knowledge. The truth is far worse - the knowledge is there, heaps of it, the problem is that it's ACTUALLY heretical. As in "wants-to-kill-everything-heretical". STCs and computers are corrupted, by direct warp influence or viruses, either normal or daemonic, making anyone use them go mad, and capable of spreading the madness just like your regular computer virus, and some of them are more insidious, pretending to be clean just to try to strike the Imperium when it would hurt the most. What doesn't make you mad, physically wants to kill you, basically every and all repository of old knowledge, Mars being the worst offender, contains millions of rogue servitors, machines, Men of Iron and Omnissiah knows what else, making any attempt to recover technology suicidal. Whatever left that is not heretical/murderous/broken/false/allofabove is rare and presumably delicate, so they simply can't let some retards that aren't themselves touch it, because while Mechanicus are vastly unqualified for the job, others are even worse. Working with science, technology and
MY MACHINES requires the levels of careful that probably could only be equalized to trying to defuse an atomic bomb in middle of Moscow/Washington D.C. at the height of Cold War. If they fuck up, it's over, and it could very much be over for everyone concerned. On a side tangent - it always baffles me that people try to paint Imperium and assorted organizations as evil, when they're the only ones who even remember what good is even anymore, it's just that they can't afford it. The horror is not that everyone is now assholes, the horror is that being an asshole is the only way to survive the onslaught of asshole world with hope that in future, there might be world where we can stop being assholes.
It kinda makes me pine for a story from the perspective of a lowly technician who gets stuck in a temporal stasis cell on accident during the dark age, getting woke up in the 'modern' era, and subsequently going on the run from the imperium for his heretical views, getting into all kinds of trouble.
He'd be the least interesting item wherever he would be found. If he survived in a stasis cell, that means there had to be active power for like ten thousand years, which implies wherever he was has relatively untouched technology and power-generators that have been able to survive so long without people checking up on them. Another point for consideration, that he survived and no daemon pulled the plug to rape his mouth through the lower intestine (or no virus caused the field to break and cause accelerated aging while keeping him alive, or something fun like that) implies that the whole place is relatively untouched by daemonic influence. What Mechanicus would do is probably rip his brain out and shove it in a navigation system so he can point them to places that also contain old technology.
Although, given that FTL is a dangerous thing and isn’t used often (though I guess FTL communication exists?) there’s some isolation effect on various imperium worlds, so, you’d think that not all worlds would experience a dark age at the same time, or at least not experience it in the same way.
During Dark Age of Technology they traveled and communicated pretty much the same way as Imperium does, except with AIs as navigators and presumably sophisticated relays instead of astropaths. All worlds were hit by the Age of Strife at the same time due to heavy warp storms that appeared through the galaxy, fucking up FTL travel, making communication impossible, starting the whole "FUCK THE MACHINES ARE TRYING TO EAT MY BRAINS" debacle, causing psykers to pop up and then pop randomly because daemons, all that while dealing with regular traits of life in The Galaxy like Orks and whatnot.
I think the Emperor himself shows evidence to the rule that logic and reason do not win in this universe. The dude tried to play everything according to reason and mathematics, but the reality is that reality is super malleable. Faith matters in weird ways which make no sense. If someone woke up from the dark age of technology and tried to flush the machine spirit on a land raider, it would likely eat him.
Emperor try was actually very successful, all thing considered, and he applied his reason and mathematics to "warp" stuff as well, because he knew it was real. He just fucked up (arguable, but I'll let it go) because he was wrestling more than four cosmic beings capable of altering reality. It was the various human governments during Dark Ages of Technology that approached everything with blind reason and mathematics, rejecting the idea of emotions mattering, despite travelling through warp on daily basis, and in general acting like Tau in regards to what is "not real", which actually makes sense if you think about it, considering that psykers only started appearing after mentioned warp storms, so it wouldn't be a stretch to say for longest time main bulk of humanity was blanks in one way or another.
Besides, said hypothetical person would have been contemporary with the era when humans were widely using AI, and when "the men of iron" initiated their rebellion. (if not slightly before.)
As such, the notion of a "machine spirit" might be seen as absurd to him. (Similar to how Tau tech is not venerated such.) Hence, why he would be on the run from the imperium for heresy. (The mechanicus would be after him real bad with a serious hate boner.)
He wouldn't be on the run for disbelief in machine spirits. Mechanicus don't actually care to this point unless someone does something like public demonstrations, which well, smells of heresy. A lot of guardsmen don't believe in machine spirits, so presumably a lot of civilians don't, which just pisses off the Tech-Priest to big extent since people like those disregard procedures and maintenance protocols, not to mention high chance of actually angering the machine spirit.
The fact that OTHERS believe in machine spirits would however, MAKE them real-- as alluded to.
Thus, the "What did you fuckers do to the universe!?" angle.
The fact they believe in machine spirits might have an impact on them, but I'm pretty sure even without that machine spirits would be very much real. Scraps of AI (which is forbidden, but it's not like Mechanicus can find an AI that tries to conceal itself), computer systems so advanced that while not being true AI, seemingly AI, and then there is the fact that a lot of Imperial tech involves fucking brains in jars in place of computers, that while mind-wiped, might retain and/or develop personalities. Machine spirit is just a term, Mechanicus explanation for the phenomena of machines acting seemingly out of their own volition and at the same time very convenient excuse to force dumb Guardsmen to actually pay attention to maintenance, or else their lasgun will come to life on it's own and fry their balls.