Techno-social beings?

Ok sorry this post on the digital culture lecture is a tad on the late side. I found this lecture really hard to relate to, and trying to find one point to write a blog on had me stumped for quite a while.

One point I did pick up on was that of human dependance on technology and other people. I guess I've never really thought about human nature in that way. In my mind we use technology because it's around us. It makes our life easier and it's fun. I had never thought of it as a dependance. Of actually needing technology to survive, then again I guess most people don't like to think about things relating to morality.

Also our dependance on other people. Yes we all know a baby needs it's parent(s) or another human to survive into childhood. From a young age children can survive on their own, as the street children in Brazil or Colombia, or countless other poorer countries have shown. However you could argue that this isn't a life, and of course it isn't in the sense of quality, however physcially many of them do survive for many years. But what about adults? Do we need human beings, like really need, in order to survive? When it comes to reproduction and the survival of the species the answer is obviously yes.

You do get conditions where people cut themselves off from contact with all people. There are cases, China specifically as far as i recall, where mostly teenage boys become recluse. They lock themselves intheir rooms and have no contact with the outside world. Parents bring food to their doors but do not see their children. These people wil then develop to be socially inept, which is a characteristic needed to 'survive' in the todays world. By survive in this context I mean 'fit in', however I guess it's all the same. We do need people to have a good quality of life in our society. But is this always the case? Can you be happy all by yourself?