Control/Alt/Delete anyone?

So I'm learning how to assist during classes at my yoga studio and one of the requirements before becoming an assistant is that you must complete a Red Cross course in first aid and AED. AED stands for Automated External Defibrillator and is an amazing little device. It works at reading and stabilizing the heart which can be beating in an unusual pattern and preventing proper blood flow. There's not much to using one because it literally tells you in a rather calm voice what you should do - step by step taking you through attaching things and clearing away and then administering a shock. In fact the real lesson for this section of the first aid course was "Don't over think the process. Listen to what the machine is telling you to do". Our instructor repeated this incessantly until it became an afternoon mantra for me.

"Don't over think the process. Listen to what the machine is telling you to do. "

In some ways this is how we live our lives day to day. We rarely question the technologies offered us. As long as they work, and are easy to use, then we invite them in. Each new idea or product we accept though carries with it the seeds of change affecting our everyday patterns and introduces a new and different way of viewing and interacting with the reality around us.

This is important because we can't separate who we are from the things that we use everyday. You are much more because you have a car and that changes your identity of who you are and what you can do. I'm someone who can meet somebody at any given time at anyplace within driving distance. You are in contact much more often with friends because you carry a mobile phone and that changes the localized society around you. The more we connect through the phone, through text messaging, through the internet, the more integrated our lives are. These are the meta patterns that I'm curious about. Meta, because they exist in each of us and yet can be extrapolated to show trends and direction amongst a large group of people. The only question I really want to ask is - are these patterns enhancing our lives or somehow limiting us. Are they helping us become more self actualized, in Mazlow's terminology, or are they merely "what the machines are telling us to do".