The Machine is us/using

I viewed a video today about how we are using the internet or is it using us. I also read chapter 1 in Library 2.0 and beyond by Nancy Courtney. I felt a real understanding about the debate or prespective of the web. Before this class, I had basically used the internet for research purposes and Facebook every once in a while. While I was in college I learned to use one of the first publishing computers and believed myself to be quite technologically savy. As the years went along I began to fall behind in technology and start to feel overwhelmed by all the advances. I have really got by into it because I had to in order to do well in this class. It is somewhat scary to see how far we have come, it is like the history teacher I had in high school always saying big brother is watching. We grow to depend on technology, but I never realized how much technology depended on us. Every time we go to Amazon to look at books they keep track of what we are interested in and use that information to send information or recommendations to other members. When a user contributes to a wiki, they are sharing their knowledge. We get on social networking site and often times join groups or express opinions, all of which is information to be used by "the machine." I shop online and the things I buy go into the research that affects how things are marketed. The fact that I don't have to buy updates for my computer that sites are constantly updating and making their sites more user friendly shows my value to "them." I guess I worry too much, but I often wonder what would happen if we lost it all, could we function without technology? Could our children learn to compete and learn the "old fashioned way", I wonder. I have noticed that I am constantly being helped with my technology issues by much younger generations and the way it seems natural to them. Does the internet encourage individuality or discourage it? Would we have more complete families and less divorce? Has the internet helped us as much as we have helped it? Are we better off today than we were 40 years ago? I really don't know, only time will tell and maybe not in our lifetimes. I am always suspicious when things are made too easy, but for the time being I am really enjoying all the conveniences that technology has to offer.