We are in a technology age and we depend on having the internet at the tips of our fingers for everything. What did people do 30yrs ago? How did they survive? No smartphones, PC's were too expensive for the everyday household, The world wide internet was just being invented and cassette tapes were still being fast forwarded and rewound. It really is amazing if you think about how technology has changed even in the last 10 years.

I too am very dependant on tech stuff. Although I strive to learn how to do things without the help of tech, like baking bread from scratch, not easy but worth it. I tried to think of other things and couldn't, lol, oh well.....

I have watched people who lost the use of their computer suddenly not know how to do their job.

They worked for me - had to show them how to use a piece of paper and a thing called a pen.

@adadavis: I look forward to the day when e-ink toilet paper is the standard. Great place to read the news...

You asked a virtual place devoted to people spotting cheap things and alerting them via 1's and 0's if we're too dependent on technology, in a country where few of us make anything? (and we're happy to be here if every once in a while we get a coupon or our triangle becomes a different color?)

there is no way that I could possibly answer this question in other than the affirmative. Ignore the internet and computers... even without those two aspects of tech, we are totally hooked.

There was a comment I came across that sums it up very nicely, I don't remember exactly how it was phrased but this is a translation of what was said.

"society has lost the ability to retain knowledge, we have gone to the point where all we remember is where to find the knowledge we are looking for."

to give an example, we no longer remember phone numbers. we depend on our phones (smart or dumb) to remember them for us. - another aspect (one that I think about all the time because it is part of my job) is a cashier at a major retail chain. Those cashiers do NOT know the price of all the items in the store... they don't even know the price of 10% of the items in the store. When/If the cash registers ever loose power, they are pretty much unable to do their jobs.

@moosezilla: I hope you are aware that @shrdlu is a female. @theant: I work in retail, so prices are constantly changing. I understand your point about the cashiers not knowing prices, but a person can't possibly know the price of every item in the store. I can't do that, yet I set the prices at our store. I CAN remember phone numbers though.

You ask this question of people sitting in front of their PC's in their pajamas searching the internet for great deals. Naw... I'm not too dependent on technology.

To provide an actual answer to the question, I think that many people are indeed slaves to the devices they carry everywhere, but I think this has always been the case. I'm not sure that I agree with the phrasing "too dependent" since it implies that there's a certain level of dependency that is somehow acceptable (and measurable), and then posits that there's a level that many have reached that is beyond that.

Here's a book I like quite a bit (and have recommended before).

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393072223

{The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, published in 2010.}

I think that many people seem to have supplanted natural relationships in their lives with pseudo friends and families, via Facebook, smartphones, and other tech. It saddens me every time I see a mother (yakking incessantly on her cell) pushing a stroller with a child whose expression tells me they're used to being ignored.

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"What brave new world this is, that has such people in it," Miranda exclaims. Perhaps she sees something that, as yet, we do not.

There is, of course, the other view, and I leave you, gentle friends, with it.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

--Shelley (Ozymandias)