I've been reading a bit about technology recently and how our approach to it has become somewhat detached from its purpose. Essentially technology was a way of improving ourselves beyond what we were born with. For example, a human had a lot of trouble hunting an animal by running after it and trying to grab it, but once they had a spear to throw at it, things became easier. Some die hards who loved the art of running after animals and grabbing them probably thought it was the death of an artform, but really I'd call it an advance. Our biggest mistake in terms of learning these days does not seem to be the having of more technology, but using technology in a way that in no way improves our thinking or abilities, rather substitutes it. We let something with no creativity, insight, etc. determine the answers. And these answers are often of no benefit to us, but we aren't clued in enough to realise.
This might even come down to training. Every person is given a computer and it is assumed that understanding how to use it equals understanding how to use it beneficially. It is as important to know when and why you are using it as the techniques. A few strong points of the computer are: large memory capacity and fast recall, ability to do complex calculations quickly, multimedia communications, ability to send or duplicate work to large number of people. A few weak points are: slow information input rate (how fast we can enter stuff), slow information output rate (how fast we can read or understand output), no insight or creativity (does not see if a step is stupid unless you think of all the options and program things to detect this), encourages us to think in unnaturally closed and limited terms which the computer/program will understand.
I believe a few of the big computer technology companies realised these things early, and put in place things like the "powerpoint free zone" to stop technology dumbing down their meetings. It also highlights the areas where computer technology/use needs to improve, and why the interface is quite important and may have been left behind in the rush for more powerful processing (that in terms of productivity is more beneficial to science and control stuff than the average user). I'd like more people to question the assumption that dumping a computer on every desk in the country improves productivity too. Lots seem to see the flashing lights of something they don't fully understand and embrace it as the way. I think the most important thing to remember about technology is we do the thinking that matters and make the decisions, it just fills in some gaps and extends us so we can think about or do more difficult and complex things.