Stomach hurts.....cannot...breathe....laughing....too......hard. *gasp*

Relying on it to do the basic functions in your life. If you think technology reliance doesn't dull people, look at what happens when the power goes out and there's no electricity or internet, people stare at a wall like they don't know what to do. They could read a book, go out, do something, instead they act as if their world is complete crap without it. There's a difference between using technology and relying on it. When you RELY on a piece of technology you could easily do by hand, yeah, it's dulled you. I am not some Luddite, so don't pull that argument, but the vast majority of people live this overly reliant life around technology to do the work for them. It makes you complacent and complacency breeds dullness of the mind in the field that piece of technology is in. A lot of people who could have learned to cook instead rely on a microwave to feed them hot meals. THAT is the kind of thing I make a point of. I really shouldn't have to explain the obvious point of my post to people around here.

This is hilarious.

If you think that brain dead people who are clueless about the world they live in is something new.... Guess what, it's not. All of recorded history is like this. (They found writings about people being deathly afraid of indoor plumbing in ancient Rome.)
Same thing applies here.

But it has ALWAYS been like that. This is nothing new.
If you think that the older generation thinking that the younger generation is dumb and confused is something new... it's not. And yet the human race's collective IQ and technological advances increases every generation. Without fail.

There is a case from last century about a farmer that was isolated from education and culture. He was picked for this reason and asked to describe one way that a dog and a chicken were the same.
He couldn't do it.
"That's silly," he said "Dogs have four legs and are a pet, but chickens have two legs and are not pets. They are very different in every way."
He was then asked, "But couldn't you say that they are both animals?"
"Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that."

Looks like you need some more interesting friends

Who said they're my friends? I live a pretty reclusive life. I was referring to the general amount of people on the internet who post about how horrible it is to live without TV, Internet and other luxuries. I'm not saying we should ban these things, but that as we further progress to newer technologies, humans as a race neglect to appreciate the simpler things and deem them 'old fashioned' when they're still applicable in certain situation. It's not a new thing for technology to bring a whole new degree of laziness as technology changes, but that shouldn't mean it's any more acceptable.

I don't see how, computers svck at at thinking (and hopefully that never changes, see any Sci-Fi ever )

It's a tool and a communication device, there have been many like trough out the history. I'd go the opposite direction, and say that in an "information society" where all the world's information is at you fingertips (literally) at all times, ignorance is a conscious choice.

Critical thought though, well that's always been problematic

Maybe so. Maybe it's just today's mass media general logic of 'Stop thinking about it! Just enjoy it!'. Maybe that media attitude just helps reveal how big a culture that is in this world, versus the world where we didn't have the internet and our perceptions of such things were microcosmic compared to today.

Depends... Overall? No. Individually? Eh. That's debateable.

Pot calling kettle black. For a guy who's complaining about the so-called loss of critical thinking, you aren't demonstrating a whole lot yourself. Your "arguments" boil down to the usual hyperbole that countless other people have been saying, which basically amounts to: "everyone but me is an idiot." You aren't the first to think this, you won't be the last, and as the comic I linked to demonstrated, there are more people with that same line of thinking than you think.

Likewise, the history of technology has gone hand in hand with critics claiming it will dumb down the masses in one fashion or another. It's older than feudalism. Plato believed that knowledge and ideas could only be conveyed via discussion and debate, which in turn made him incredibly skeptical of writing. And so on. We've heard it all before, and we'll hear it again and again. And it won't stop being funny.

I think technology just increases our potentials, whether for stupidity or for intelligence. That is, idiots become more idiotic and smart people become smarter.

Why?

If you are someone who doesn't like to think much (i.e. an idiot), technology enhances your ability to do so. All the "facts" you need are a click away, and anything you really need to do, either there's something around to do it for you or you can find simple directions to do it yourself.

If, on the other hand, you are someone who does like to think (i.e. a smart person), technology enhances your ability to do that, too. The Internet enables one to not just gather, but also quickly verify information. If you want to add to your skillset, that's close at hand, too. And you can share and discover new ideas far more quickly than ever before, through social media much like this forum (not necessarily Facebook, I mean things like http://physicshelpforum.com/ and http://www.python-forum.org/).

Thus, I, through the Internet, can research physics, programming Python, and universities, while some of my less academically-inclined classmates can strip away the need to think. And locally on my computer (or calculator), I can improve my understanding of math by messing with binary or exploring problems which are beyond the ability of most humans to do mentally, while my fellows dull their skills by using a calculator to determine what 12**2 is.