I hope the author will allow me this shameful linking, as I already bought all his books... If not, please comment here, and I'll remove the pics.

The link to this (excellent) comic author is this one.

The pitch: Carrot top and moustache-man are in the subway. Moustache-man goes into a rant about the two lovers communicating by text-messenging. Carrot top gets a reminiscence of a time when he and his girlfriend were doing the same, and actually joking about the guys in front of them nad their peculiar sense of clothing. Curious parallels emerge...

My commentary: behind the technology, there is often another human whith whom we communicate. The problem is more the availabity we consent to the people actually being at the same place as us.

i would also blame advertising for a lot of the infantilisation, as most of the cloying, crooning babytalk mode of communication adopted by two generations now has its roots in the industry's pandering to the lowest intellectual denominator, like wise the taste for mindless repetition of moronic, meaningless catchphrases.

consumerism in general creates empty human beings, tech itself is not to blame, cell phones just another tool to communicate, garbage in garbage out.

the tantrics say the way up is the same as the way down, but in reverse. if somehow we could have skipped TV and skipped directly to the internet we may have had two more generations less zombiefied, too late now, there's a lot of brain cells to regenerate!

much work to do in this regard, luckily it's fun.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

Problems I do see:

• It is much easier to bully someone.
  
• It is much easier for debates to derail.
  
• After the one-way communication of TV, public discourse now fragments into several isolated communities of like-minded people who build develop their own biased worldviews.
  
• The inward-looking tendency of society is enhanced (people look at the world and only see humans in it).

The lives of women, at least, are categorically better because of technology. In fact, technology has proved to be a necessary condition for the advancement of women's functionings in society.  Technologies such as the washing machine and vacuum cleaners freed up enormous time allotments for women, allowing women to organize socially and politically outside of the heretofore domestic constraints of traditional society.  And communications and information technologies today allow women a more equal space with men in both economic activities as well as political roles.  Then, of course, reproductive medical technologies have provided greater control over the timing of fertility with obvious advantages.  And all of these, plus other technologies, are part of the "great force" of urbanization -- specifically capitalist urbanization -- that began only a few hundred years ago.

Through my teen years my worldview was almost totally defined by Heinlein, Asimov, Verne and Wells.  Science and technology would solve every problem, and we would go to the stars and live happily every after.  

I was probably about 20 when I first read Dune.  It was something of a philosophical coming of age.  It opened my mind not only to ecological awareness, but to a larger truth as well.  Science and technology are two-edged swords.  They are not good or evil in themselves, only in how we choose to use them.  They may yet solve most if not all our problems, but only if we use them wisely -- if we understand clearly which edge we are using.

Now where are we going and what's with the handbasket?

As the sage said, "90 of everything is crud". Was true for pre-electricity writing, is and was true about television, is true about the internet.