It's a bad thing. At one point Garmin ran a "You'll be lost without it" ad campaign. One of the rare occasions when a marketing tagline wasn't total nonsense.

I think that Man is not stuck on earth forever. There are still huge reserves of metals and other rare elements which we will need to have when moving to other planets but maybe its better to wait until technology gets better and more efficient. Next decades will be focused on resources more than ever. This will of course cause drop in standard of living as you have written. Stuff won't be as cheap. There won't be today's cheap (and abused) labour from china because china is done with focusing on exports and will start to develop itself with all the dollars it accumulated (and is now buying loads of commodities with them).

Beware the vast malware repository of a woman scorned...

Some of us who work for a living and commute plug our oh-so-overpriced smartphones (which have the benefit of working in locations beyond our parents' basements) into our car stereos or headphones while we commute to our places of employment.

It's less masturbatory than sitting on Slashdot being bitter at people who like nice things.

http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2009/february/ti_09.html