Here's a nice bit of Academic research on the subject. Excerpt: "In his 1930 text Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud outlined the negative impact that he perceived technological progression was having on the contentment of human beings. He referred to all technology as prosthesis, an artificial organ attached to the body and used to fulfil a yearning for a missing component of the whole self. A device such as a telephone (still relatively innovative in the 1930s) served to accentuate a lack of physical and emotional proximity between two human beings. For Freud all technology represented a loss and the beginnings of a collective alienation that he perceived at the heart of the social domain." http://www.vanessabartlett.com/2012/07/16/589/