Technology -Master or Slave?

I have just spent 10 computer free days. I also had very limited access to a mobile phone signal and I enjoyed it. It was good to forget about the demands of email, the internet, and not be at the beck and call of the whole world via mobile phone.

This has made me wonder whether all this technology is good or bad? I suspect the answer is that it is a little of both providing we manage it and not vice versa. Email has become the curse of the workday. Where once upon a time you would write a letter (or get your clerical assistant to write it), send it and wait for the answer, now if you don't have an answer to an email in 10 minutes you think you are being ignored.

This morning I watched someone trying to enrol in their Uni course via the internet. By the time she had tried a half a dozen times, had to look up various sites to find out the right codes for all the questions and generally become frustrated with the whole thing; she could have driven to an office, filled out a form and paid her money twice over.

I am scared by the automatic checkouts in our new Big W store....what will happen to the after school and weekend jobs for our school kids. Will supermarkets go the way of banks? Will I just wander into a shop, choose what I want, give my money to a machine, (or just transfer it from the handybank to the supermarket) and wander off home never having spoken to or met a living soul.

We have seen the paperless office idea of the seventies become a myth as we drown in ever increasing piles of computer printouts. Will we also see at sometime in the future a change of heart about the benefits to society of the ever increasing number of automated processes which make our life "easier."?