I have lots of gadgets. Tons of them. I don't buy them to fill a void in my soul, or because I'm a mindless zombie consumer hypnotized by evil capitalist advertising. I buy them because I feel like it. Electronics have fascinated me since I was old enough to unscrew the cover from the light switch and stick the screwdriver into that hole in the wall to see what the hell was going on in there.
I also own (and make) more art than you do ("you" being the average person reading this let's say - not any one of you specifically, of course), and more books, music and musical instruments.
So there goes the theory that modern technology necessarily equals the death of the soul and traditional "culture."
People who line up at Wal-Mart and trample each other to get in at 5 a.m. are an easy target. To equate all manners of consumerism with those types is lazy. To suggest that people who consume some of the same things that those type of people do is like comparing Barack Obama and Malcom X because they are both black. Draw your own parallels there, but the ones I'm thinking of aren't pretty.
I'm as big a Luddite and advocate of the old ways as the next crank or crackpot, but to dismiss the changes that are going on in society with a big THE END IS NEAR sign is shortsighted and dare I say, stupid. The end is not near. It will take a lot more than the eventual (inevitable) collapse of America to signal the end of anything.