Technological dependance

I've been putting a little bit of thought into my relationship with technology. This was prompted by reading one of the robot books by Isaac Asimov. In his books, people either use robots out of need, or by preference. On Earth, robots are unacceptable to be seen in society, and are often knocked around for the fun of it. On Spacer worlds, they are domestic staff, security and general attendants. It is unseemly not to have one about.
I think that I prefer my technology immobile and as unobtrusive as possible. If I had my way, the computer would be an all encompassing device, handling all of my data needs, but hidden in a box somewhere. The only time you would see it would be when it needs maintenance. It could control the temperature of the house, feed television signals to screens in various rooms and even answer direct verbal questions.
In short, I'd prefer to see a Star Trek version of the future as opposed to a Star Wars version, with droids running all over the place.
The flip side to that argument is that I can see where a mobile and autonomous robot would be useful in certain situations. For example, if an elderly person wishes to remain in his or her own home, a robot could be assigned to make sure that medication is taken properly, that the home is kept clean, and to summon help if needed. It might work best if such a device looked and acted somewhat human, I suppose.
What it all boils down to in the end is a question of just how dependent we want to become on the things that we create. At what point does the leisure we gain become outweighed by the loss of the ability to do things for ourselves?
Even the technology we have has left us at a disadvantage in some ways. There are kids out there that cannot do simple arithmetic in their heads. Spell checking has taken the place of learning to write properly. (I do have to admit that I use the spell check, but I don't rely on it. It never does the job completely right anyway.) An entire generation is growing up losing basic abilities.
The use of the Internet to cut and paste essays is another fine example of a good tool being used to avoid learning anything. When I went to school, writing papers was all about knowing the material. It would have been nice to have all of that data at my finger tips, but we should be stressing the absorption of the knowledge that the Internet gives us access to.
Maybe we should teach our children the basics of reading, writing and math before we let them use the tools to expand on that. It seems to me, that once you have mastered the "three r's", as we used to call them, education using computers could take you a lot farther.
As far as robotics goes, let's give that a chance to develop, without letting it interfere with our ability to do for ourselves.