There’s a [clip][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk] floating around of comedian Louis CK appearing on Conan, talking about how ridiculous people are because their misplaced sense of entitlement for modern technology. The clip is funny in and of itself, but what is more is that it challenges just how self-aware and appreciative our technocentric society actually is.

People tend to take their resources for granted, whether it’s what we find in nature or the products we consume. Even worse, society has steadily developed a weird sense of entitlement for newer, shinier, Apple-ier things all the time. Indeed, we love our gadgets, and we love how “efficient” they make our lives. But, really, what do we actually do with all this technology at hand?

“We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don’t care.” That was the verdict from the video. Louis made the point that “everything is amazing right now, and nobody’s happy,” because we lack the sense of just how many resources we have at our disposal, and that we take what we have been given and immediately expect it to perform flawlessly at our every beck and call.

Harsh? Perhaps a little. But in every joke there’s an element of truth. Technologically, we have a lot going for us – an armada of tools we can use to make our lives easier, solve virtually any given problem, or at least figure out what can – but we still find ways to overcomplicate things, be overly demanding, and use technology failures as excuses for our own shortcomings.

“I couldn’t find the answers I needed because the Google wasn’t working.”

Although I, like many, love and cherish my gadgets on a deep, intimate level as only the truest of lovers know, I condemn the dependency that they have created. When Facebook crashes (a free service with no guarantees whatsoever), it completely derails millions of people’s social lives. It’s a little embarrassing that we spend so much time and resources to have all this computing power at our fingertips (which we enthusiastically dump our everlasting souls into), and yet when you examine just how shallow their realistic functions are, you find that we do comparatively little real, actual, progressive work with them.

These are just observations on the consumer side of the technology market. I understand if this sounds like an overblown tirade against all technophiles, but it’s simply intended to illustrate how there is a small correlation between the sophistication of technology and our declining self-sufficiency.

This relationship exists in innovation as well, where technology is most crucial. I hear of many researchers who say their projects will advance further “when the technology catches up.” Yes, statistically you can easily track the history of technological innovation in empirical terms, and thus reasonably predict where our boundaries will be a decade from now. But is that really any good excuse?

“When the technology catches up” is a statement of complacency, which only propagates the embarrassing reality that we have become only as good as the tools we have at hand. NASA landed astronauts on the moon in 1969 with less computational power than a modern handheld calculator. Times of true innovation are measured by how much we stretch the resources we have at hand.

There has always been this sense of manifest destiny, a “white man’s burden” to push the limits of technology as far and as fast as possible, and connect every corner of the map to the grid. For the most part, though, I think technology in its current state has long surpassed our abilities to use it to its fullest potential. We haven’t yet begun to properly consolidate what formidable resources we already have.

The most pressing task is not to build faster computers, but to know how to best feed them data. In the same way, consumers have the implicit obligation not to maximize their resources, but exhaust them as much as possible. Otherwise, we aren’t actually functioning, so much as just watching the lights flash.

I conclude this diatribe with an appropriate quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“He had been extremely chastened to realize that although he originally came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac, he didn’t, by himself, know how any of it worked. He couldn’t do it. Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.”

Just words. Inspiring words.