The OP would do well to read "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau or, perhaps more pointedly, read up on the teachings of Epicurus[1]. And, more generally, I highly recommend "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" by Alain De Botton. And then there's the defining entry from 1960's philosophy, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Persig, which is precisely about the intersection between nature and technology.
These concerns with modernity go pretty far back in our history, and some very smart people have come up with workable solutions you can adopt as an individual without needing to go change society.
Thank you both for these suggestions. I recall reading E. M. Forster's story at school and my contribution to English class was that he was wrong about there being a separate button for everything: in reality things would have been multiplexed and the person would have used a keypad or similar :-)
The flip side of this is that without the Kindle, it would have been "I may go pick up a copy from the public library, if I find myself visiting it soon and remember this thread when I'm there."
He's a lot more likely to actually get around to reading it when it's instantly and freely available. Hurrah for the public domain.
I'd also highly recommend the book "Shopcraft as Soulcraft" by Matthew Crawford. It's certainly not a classic like "Walden" or "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and found it very applicable to this type of philosophical discussion.
These concerns with modernity go pretty far back in our history, and some very smart people have come up with workable solutions you can adopt as an individual without needing to go change society.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus