Is Life Getting Harder?

I think life is getting more difficult. Technology is supposed to make life easier but I don't think it is. The more technological we get, the more we rely on it and the more we want. As a society, we can't get satisfied (think Rolling Stones). The hunger for information is insatiable. Worse yet, it is accelerating. With every "improvement", we want another one even faster. And its not just in the arena of information. We also want more and faster in every other aspect of our lives. More material things, more interaction with people (electronically, of course), more "scoop" on our friends and on celebrities, more everything.

With this flood of information and gluttony, we continue to make life harder through self-imposed governance. We willingly let the nanny government protect us from ourselves. We ask them to ban things that are perfectly fine if used properly. We decide that instead of allowing ourselves to make healthy choices, we need the government to protect us. Can you see the irony there? We "need" the government to protect us from certain foods, sodas, drugs, etc. because, allegedly, people are too dumb to do it themselves but yet we have more information at our fingertips than any other society in the history of the world. We don't know what to do with the information. More likely, we indulge in the wrong information and don't bother to look at the info that matters.

What's the solution? How do we make life easier instead of harder? Should we just "unplug"? Should we withdraw from society? How do we make the choice to filter out so much information? Should we filter it?