Bless this Age of Technology

As a general rule, technology and everything that goes along with it (instruction manuals the size of small dwellings, the potential to lose entire essays in the click of a button, the development of such ailments as 'repetitive strain injury' adding unnecessary strains to the over-stretched health service) annoys the hell out of me. Today, however, I'm more inclined to thank part of it - despite having completely lost my voice courtesy of a particularly vicious cold, I'm still able to rant to you. I could rant that too much effort has gone into the creation of this technology allowing me to post to worldwide readers my frustrations with loss of ability to speak, and not enough effort has gone into ensuring my voice stays with me at all times. But frankly, I don't have the energy.
So what has Technology really done for us? It has removed the necessity of washing dishes - replacing this relatively calming activity with the requirement to bend and lift, bend and lift, as you empty the dishwasher (RSI resulting). It means that we can hurtle around the world in a capsule and arrive in Australia less than twenty four hours after leaving home, thus replacing that three month cruise where people used to meet and form lifelong friendships. On the flight we are provided with eyemasks and earplugs to block out any thought of the presence of others. Whereas years ago people would walk down the lane to a barn and dance the night away with their close-knit community, we now travel potentially miles and miles to launch ourselves into a room filled with glaring lights flashing erratically and 'music' being forced on us at such a volume we are unable to speak to those immediately next to us. Technology means I can talk to a coffee farmer in Jamaica more easily than my next door neighbour; I can form friendships with people across the Atlantic more readily than with others in my home town. Everybody who uses the likes of MSN knows that it is remarkably easy to say things that you wouldn't ordinarily in conversation - to some extent you are distanced from your words as you type them. While some say this is a positive, I say otherwise: you can end up in situations that you would never normally have intended, having convinced yourself that somebody 'knows the real you'.
Technology has essentially allowed us to become increasingly disconnected from the world around us as it strives to demonstrate just how connected it can make us. A three year old boy sat with the dead body of his mother for two weeks in Scotland recently: nobody knew he was in the house, or that she had died. My God, what has the West become?