&gt; I firmly believe that increased technology makes smaller and smaller cogs of us all, making us worse and worse, concentrating real experiences and all that creative stuff onto fewer and fewer people who can actually afford it.<p>This is just demonstrably false, by a whole host of measurable metrics. For example:<p>Average people fly long distances dramatically more today than ever before. (And I&#x27;m not talking about just in rich countries -- regional airlines are booming in Africa and Asia too.) It&#x27;s pretty hard to argue that visiting a faraway place is not a &quot;real experience&quot; that is more accessible than ever.<p>The fraction of children in the world who go to school instead of doing menial labor is the highest in history and continuing to rise.<p>And you can&#x27;t have any &quot;real experiences&quot; if you&#x27;re dead, so historically low global child mortality is generating an awful lot more real experiences.<p>&gt; You become ever closer to a mere regurgitator of pre packaged thoughts.<p>It&#x27;s rather rich to claim the past was better along this dimension, when most of history was dominated by orthodox religions backed by political elites, and only a tiny elite could even read. Unless you think literacy implies more regurgitation, in which case you&#x27;ve watered down the term enough that it loses it opprobrium.