[Mike]

Wow, great post. I too read that Slashdot article, it was pretty thought provoking. I believe innovation is due cause of necessity, and laziness is due cause of innovation.

I remember learning about the Renaissance (I just had to Google to figure out how spell that... irony?) in school. The biggest thing that I remember about it, was that because of the period of mass innovation before, they had cities where they no longer had to work on acres and acres of farmland which led to a massive boom in the liberal arts. The Internet/robotics/innovation in general will cause the same kind of effect. We no longer have to work a repetative job, say in a factory. We have robots that can do that for us now. This leaves us free to work on bigger and better things.

We are also more of a logical society now. With the major science findings in the past few years, more and more people are doubting the religions and other spiritualities. I'm not trying to start a religion battle here, but it's a fact that there are more atheists/deists/agnostics today than ever before.

As far as Googling rather then looking in your textbook, I don't think that's a bad thing. Why waste your time looking the slower way, when you can do it the faster way and get more done faster? Honestly, I can't wait until all books are digitized. Theres nothing I'd like more than to hit ctrl+f when I'm looking for a certain phrase in a book...