Why is technology becoming more affordable?

Are we becoming more reliant on technology?

• An engineering and human factors professor of mine recently proposed that we, as a society, are becoming increasingly reliant on technology. He also posited that this resulted in complacency and would have a negative outcome on "modern society." This argument is not uncommon: lack of ability to navigate without GPS, lack of ability to do arithmetic without calculators, and so forth.  I espoused the opposite view: we are no more reliant than ever, our technology is just achieving higher functionality. When we abandoned cooking over open flame to use stoves and ovens, it could've been argued our society was becoming more reliant on technology-- I'd just say we were advancing. Similarly, Socrates posited that books would be the end of man's ability to reason-- also seems to have proven untrue. Pencil and paper-based arithmetic operations are a technology (or set of technologies); if more advanced and efficient technologies are developed, I don't see that as a reliance so much as evolution of process. Clearly, however, people have strong opinions on both sides.

• Answer:

  I'll pose a couple questions to you. If the power went out tomorrow and didn't come back on and vehicles stopped working, how many people do you know who would survive after initial food stocks ran out and local water supplies became contaminated? Yet a hundred years ago, the western US and Canada were pioneered by people without access to either.   What is more important for survival, the utensils you use to cook or your ability to start a fire without a match or a lighter? You can cook a lot of things on a stick if you need to, but if you can't start a fire you won't be cooking anything.   As we have developed new technology, many of us have not maintained the skills that were required before that technology existed. Once we no longer have those skills, we are wholly reliant on that technology.