We are improving technology everyday but is it returning the favor?

Take an intelligent teenager who is good at arithmetic calculations. Give him a calculator. In two years he will be dependent on the calculator for all his calculations. Now give him a computer. In a few years, he may not be able to write by hand that fast. In a few years give him a car, he might lose his fitness. Give him a GPS and he might forget the roads and lose his sense of direction. I guess the point I am trying to make is that when we start using technology to do something for us, there is gradually a significant decline in our ability to do that thing on our own and we get dependent on that technology. I wonder if we get a gadget which can think for us, will we gradually lose the ability to think also?

This reminds me of a Russel Peters joke. It goes like this: He goes to a McDonalds and orders a burger, coke and fries. The cashier does not need to know the prices of individual items. He has a separate button for each item. He just presses those different buttons. He does not need to calculate the sum also. Everything is automated. If someone pays in cash, the cashier just enters the cash amount in the machine and it dispenses the required change. For Russel, the bill was $9.10. He gives the cashier a 10 dollar bill and 10 cents. The cashier looks at him completely confused :P.
Cashier: what is the 10 cents for, man?
Russel: so that it is easier for you to give me change.
Cashier: I don't understand man. Why would you give me 10 cents extra?
Russel tries to explain him
Cashier: Dude, are you trying to trick me??

Fortunately we are not there yet :P. But, sometimes I think, what will happen if there are gadgets/robots to do everything for us. The easier life gets, the less we will need to think, and (may be) the less our thinking capacity will develop. The purpose of all this technology is to make our life smoother and give us more time to do bigger things ... but is it reducing our capability to do those bigger things? Some Sci-fi movies have considered the possibility of artificial intelligence getting better than human intelligence. I wonder if it will be due to the improvement of artificial intelligence or due to a decline in human intelligence. Remember Wall-E? Will we be dependent on robots to do everything for us, while we will just be fat and dumb with no talent other than pressing some buttons? Also, what if all this technology goes away suddenly? Will we be able to survive?

May be, the situation is not as bad as I am imagining. In fact, things might actually be going in the exact opposite direction. Kids of today are much smarter than those of earlier generations. The amount of technology and media around them has played a big role in that. The media makes them more knowledgeable, while the peer pressure of getting and learning newer technology than their friends makes them smarter :P. However, with all these minute-by-minute twitter and facebook updates, they are probably more distracted also.

I am sure, rather I hope, there will always be a creative segment in the society. After all, we need some who will take the responsibility for making these technologies work and others who will learn new ways to use or break them. But, for other lazy bones like me, it might just go the Wall-E way!