How come that every cheapo 100-Dollar point-and-shoot digital still camera automatically records EXIF data (metadata) about lens size, F-Stop, etc., and I can put any autofocus lens on every 500-Dollar SLR camera out there, and it does the same, but the 20/50/180,000-Dollar (or the I'm-so-expensive-you-can-only-rent-me) digital film cameras don't have that?

Every invention that has ever been created had to face one final battle. The battle between conservative and progressive people. I think there are lots of possible reasons and scenarios in which it might make sense to be conservative. But creativity and technology is definitely not one of them. And filmmaking is both creative AND based on technology. Not a single technological advancement in history has been achieved by being conservative. And technology is simply the basis for everything we do in film production.