More and more cameras these days are skimping on the controls. The Sony NEX series, for example, relies mostly on three buttons and a dial. Canon just introduced the SD4000 Powershot which has a similar three-button-plus-dial configuration.
While I've been harping on UI configuration for some time now (the D3000 is notably wrong in design, IMHO, as I'll outline in an upcoming review), the trend towards fewer controls isn't driven by trying to help the user. No, the trend is driven by cost control in manufacturing. Fewer controls mean fewer parts and less labor, and fewer points of failure, which means lower costs. With camera prices continuing to drop, the yen still appreciating, and competition still intense, the camera makers have no choice but to simplify and remove costs out of the cameras.
But here's the problem: the makers are ignoring a simple design tenet in product lines. When you have a line of products from simple to complex, you really want your low end product to help a user learn things that would be useful if they ever pick up a higher end product. Indeed, if you care about brand loyalty, you want the user to start low in your line and buy their way up. But if the user has to learn things over at each level, well, you're undermining yourself.
The Sony NEX UI is a good example. They correctly reduce aperture change to something the user would be using it for (depth of field), but they never tell the user what the aperture actually is while making this setting! Use a NEX and you set depth of field with a "depth of field" control. Use an Alpha and you set depth of field with aperture. Hmm. That doesn't sound right, does it? (I'll have an example of what I mean by appropriate "training design" later on this site.)
When you simplify an interface for novices, you should usually give them the option to see the "advanced" method or result, too. That's how they'll grow from one product to another. This, by the way, is the reason why I don't recommend Photoshop Elements to anyone who may eventually need to grow into Lightroom or Photoshop CS5. The way you learn to do things in Elements doesn't always exactly help you learn how to do them in the full package. Elements is more Photoshop Simpler-but-Different than it is Photoshop Lite. Likewise, Scene Modes in most cameras do nothing to help the user figure out how to progess beyond them, let alone tell the user what it is that they're doing.