My counterpoint, not meant to provoke anything other than discussion, is this:

Is it a reliance on machines, or is it using machines to do the "dumb" work, and using our brains for the higher-level activity? I mean, how much of your brain is it taking to schlep the hose out and water the plants as opposed to letting a system to do it. You've already done the "higher order" thinking by determining the lawn needs watering, now it's just a grunt-execution level task.

As the old jokes goes, we've already decided what type of people we are, now we're just haggling about the extent. You've chosen to type on a computer with a virtual community instead of talking to your neighbor. You have a source, pre-amp, eq, and an amp, which means you rely on electricity for enjoyment rather than reading a book (which presumably you'd need a light rather than a candle, so I guess that's not that much better).

Is using some electronics to handle the grunt work of distributing some audio or video signals throughout the house, or pressing a button to send water to a pipe versus manually moving the pipe, really that much different? The only true luddites are the villagers in 4th world countries. Everyone else has already chosen the path of using an external device to perform a function for them, the only discussion left is which devices to do which functions.

Computers will NEVER take the place of actual thought, they'll just be able to do ever increasing levels of sophistication which can only free us to do better things.