Technologically Advanced?

Yesterday Brian's bookkeeper came in to do expenses and what not on my computer. Which meant I lost my computer for about two and a half hours. I dread being away from my email, my ability to look things up for clients, and of course, my blog and gmail. The two and a half hours went by quicker than the entire rest of the day. I took a stack of paperwork I had been slightly putting off and went to town, resolved issues with other companies (who had previously been avoiding my phone calls) and contacted several clients for meetings. While it seems trivial I think back to the days of sophomore year at UST.

My sophomore year I put my subwoofer behind my monitor. It started to have these green stripes across it and look funny and then one day, kaput. Gateway informed me that I was the dumb*** who stuck a subwoofer behind the monitor so no it was not covered under my warranty. Crap! What was I going to do without a monitor? Well, let me tell you what I did. First, I did my homeworkk out in the hall and went to the library to do essays. And my grades were the highest they have ever been in college, 3.8 (although to be honest I only got the one B+ because I was writing a paper dellusional due to the flu and lack of sleep.) Second, I brought my monitor home in my suitcase, somehow they let me carry it on the plane, and then had a friend look at it. My parents gave me their screen and purchased a new one for themselves. I proceeded to carry my monitor on the plane again and was set. And ever since then my grades were not 3.8's. They were good and I can't complain. However, this has led me to wonder, what's so advanced about computers?

I get that they can find things at lightning fast speed, making searching for things easy, and are all around fun. However, in my experience it seems that certain individuals (i.e. me) are less productive when I have a computer at my disposal. I can find a billion things to do other than my school work. It was so easy to procrastinate. And then I would stress out about not having enough time to do anything when in reality I had wasted so much time on the computer it was sickening.

So my question is, do you think computers have helped us more or hurt us more? People send emails instead of snail mail, video chat and online date instead of meeting people in person, etc. Have they hurt personal relationships or strengthened them? Have they helped increase productivity or decrease by causing distractions?