Apps; App Atrophy of Humanity and Human Interactions

Everyone loves Apps, I'll admit even I do. But I have to wonder what they are doing to us as people. Is it the normal progression of our species to allow a computer to work out tip money for us or find our ways home? I agree that apps for your phone and widgets for your computer are great, they save time and time is money. But in the long run are we really serving ourselves by forgeting how to do things without being held by the iHand and guided through our iLives?

Lets look at some of the things we are losing as a society by our apps. According to Times the top ten iPhone apps of 09 were:
Tweety 2 (Twitter)
Yelp (restaraunt and bar reviews)
Slacker (streaming music)
Flight Track Pro (real time flight tracking)
Mint (budgeting tool)
Slingbox (mobile TV)
Small Chair (moble reading material)
Run Keeper (work out trainer)
Photoshop Moble (photoshop on the go)
Locavore (find the good local eats)

Ok so the top 10 of 2009 don't really eat away at human interactions or abilities that we should have as people but there are some things that raise eyebrows about what we are doing and how as people.

For instance the application Slingbox, awesome as it may be to the TV addicts, allows us to completely unplug from reality and suck ourselves into the world of TV sitcoms and dramas for however long we want. So on the bus and at the bar should we expect to or want to see everyone pacified by TV streaming to our phones? I think that might be destroing interactions that are very important to have. For instance you are going to become completely unsocial in social places if you sit there watching TV all the time. People wont come up to you and want to talk. Kinda missing the point of being in public at a bar or something like it, dont you think? Same could be said for streaming music and movie apps as well.

What about things like Yelp? If we trust everyone elses experiences we might miss out on having memorable experiences of our own. I, for one, really enjoy missadventures when they happen. I wouldn't want to miss out if I was told to by another person. Similarly I might in fact enjoy the place that everyone else decries.

I suppose the point that I am trying to make is that if we rely on our apps to solve every great dilema of our lives we might end up missing something important, or if not important, at least enjoyable. Things like tip calculators and GPS might be robbing us of skills that are important to have without needing the assistance of a machine. And lastly if we spend our lives playing Brick Breaker on our phones we might miss out on the world passing us by, and that would be a terrible thing to miss out on.