<Author>AG</Author>
<Nationality>British</Nationality>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Age>25</Age>
<First language>English</First language>
<Other foreign languages in decreasing order of proficiency>None</Other foreign languages in decreasing order of proficiency>
<Last degree>English BA (Hons)</Last degree>
<Years of staying in China>1</Years of staying in China>
<Topic>3</Topic>
To me, these two arguments are not mutually exclusive.  Those who talk of the good old days will tell invariably tell you that life was better when technology was simpler.  This is a matter of personal opinion and the viewpoint is, I suspect, steeped in basic psychology (for many reasons, we all tend to grow old with a rosy view of the past).  My opinion is that even the most dedicated of these folk cannot make a reasonable argument that technology has made life less convenient.
Certainly, technology has simplified everyday tasks.  Where once it was necessary to spend an entire day walking to the butchers; the bakers; the greengrocers; the tobacconist C and furthermore order import goods weeks in advance - we can now condense this into less than an half an hour spent sitting at our computer screens.  As the saying goes, the world is getting smaller - enabling real-time conversations with people half the world away, information shared between them at the speed of light.  Simple, secure electronic cards are replacing cash; pocket-sized gizmos replacing your tens of thousands of cassette tapes.
The most common argument for life having been better in the past than it is now is that society is declining morally.  In the west, the elderly will often tell stories of how they would leave their doors unlocked when they went out and lend money to strangers in need.  They were better times, they will say.  My own view is that, as social creatures with a certain inherent joie de vivre, we simply yearn for a time when we were young and carefree, and had friends with whom we could socialise every day.  As we get older, we are increasingly weighed down with family and responsibility, and lose touch with our friends.  Add to this a growing misanthropy as we become more right-wing with age, and its easy to understand the roots of this position.  The more bizarre stories told by the elderly can be explained by psychological confabulation: the brain filling in the blanks, and often inventing memories outright to make sense of a society from which we are growing increasingly detached. 
My view is that morality, insofar as our most basic sense of right and wrong, is inherent.  Those of us of sound mind already know, and feel, the need to treat others with the same decency we expect to receive ourselves; that theft, violence and murder are wrong.  Any man worth his salt will always know the importance of working hard and feeding his family.  I feel that those who talk of a decline in morality (read: social standards) are mistaken anyway.  In the west, it was less than 100 years ago that women were not allowed to vote and less than 40 years ago that the police started taking active notice of domestic violence.  Less than 50 years ago, negroes in the US had to surrender their bus seats to white people; less than 40 years ago, the use of heroin was legal.  My view is that social standards are in fact rising higher (arguably to a fault, with arguments over what is P.C becoming farcical).  This is owing to a greater understanding of human anatomy and psychology, for which of course we can again thank science.
In conclusion, technology has doubtlessly made our lives simpler, and in my view this has little or no bearing on whether or not we feel our personal lives to be better.