environment vs interaction

Is using technology always the easy and short way in making something? and even if it were easier and quicker does that mean that it is the best way to design to engage people in learning about and through their environment? what is" the" environment anyway if their are so many different types of it. I don't want to limit my design to an audience, I don't want it's nature to limit. Is everything just a race to saving time and energy, but perhaps in the end it's just about money, you have it or don't, but money is time after all. If you have an iPhone then you have a portable map and you never get lost, if you have an unlimited oyster you don't walk anymore but you take the bus even just to go around the corner, if you have a credit card you just shop online and you save time, if you a flashy camera you don't look anymore through your eyes but through a lens, if the weather forcast tells you it is going to rain than you take your umbrella and nobody gets wett anymore. Poeple listen to their ipod, chat on their phone, read, but to people actually still engage in their environment? Isn't this race for technology just ruining the environment as a network of people that used to engage? 

So why I am designing something that puts priorities in the wrong place?