This may be shocking to today's generation, but people actually survived
without cell phones, iPods, DVDs, TiVo, etc. in the old days.

Today's insistence on instant and personal news and entertainment I am
reminded of the Ray Bradbury story about a near future society where
machines tell people via audio about their upcoming appointments, the
weather, the news, trivia, etc., all day long.

In the story, a psychiatrist visits an allegedly insane inmate at an asylum.
Turns out the inmate systematically and cleverly destroyed every talking
device he owned because he just could not take the incessant talking from
the machines. The inmate says he is quite happy in his little, simple cell,
where nothing is talking to him any more. The uncomprehending psychiatrist
leaves the inmate, where we see him bombarded with messages from his
pager, etc., as he walks back into his society.

While I certainly do enjoy certain modern conveniences, especially the instant
gathering of news and information, I wonder if we are not only going to be
left spoiled by this technology, but even made helpless if something goes
terribly wrong with it.

Which reminds me of a story by Asimov (I think) about a future world where
no one knows how to do mathematics any more because computers do it all
for them.