The idea of techno - the actual genre of techno - is that dance music should not be difficult to make and not difficult to have it continue. When techno was originally coined by Kraftwerk, it represented a music solely made by machines. When the Detroit movement came into effect in 1982, it was all about rebelling against the machine by working with the machine. Because Detroit was ground zero of the automation of the auto-manufacturing jobs, it left people confused as to what to do with themselves when all the jobs they had were being lost to machines. The only way they saw to undo all of that was to work with the machines. Hence techno. If you listen to first wave techno (Sharivari, Clear, etc) you will hear that the music is very much like any other funk music being made during that time but with a darker edge.
In the second wave, bourne by the breakthrough of house music, techno became a form of music that was meant to have the night go on, keeping everyone dancing while not killing their ears, achieveing this by offering minimal melodies and simplistic drums. Artists who were the forefrunt of this were Jeff Mills (US) and Ritchie Hawtin (Canada). To have yourself recognised in this music was by demonstrating that you could make the machines do unique things while still having the minimal beats and minimal beats. The Bells is a good example, using cheap synthesisers and (then) even cheaper drum-sequencers and being able to do a lot with them. You also have to realise that most techno producers did not use computers until around 1991-2 and even then, they used the Atari ST and not the Commodore 64 and the Amiga.
Third wave, or "acid techno" is when they brought tweaking of the sounds to the forefront and mad it possible to have showcase pieces for techno, like DDR & Geezer's "Mad Cows on Acid" or Solar Quest's "Acid Air Raid" or more famously Pump Panel's Reconstruction Mix of New Order's "Confusion."