That life. As in, that's life as it has always been. There's always been people that remind others, and there are always those that remember things easier than others. What difference is there whether it's an application or your mother reminding you? You still need to make a choice whether it's worth it to you,the app isn't forcing you to do anything. It can alter the influence we apply to certain actions when deciding how much someone cares, but it doesn't take away our ability to show we care. So what if more people will remember birthdays or illnesses, the people that really care will make an effort to show that in some manner. If just remembering is no longer a bit deal, they'll do something else.

> With too much automation of our social lives and relationships, many actions may simply become meaningless.

So we stop doing those actions. We'll find new actions, or reinterpret old ones to mean something more.

> Your not actually thinking about who you want to spend time with and why.

Then you must not care about the people involved. You devote time to what you care about. Reminders aren't going to change that.

These reminders are really just alleviating cultural busywork, which is really only needed because these cultural norms developed when we lived in much smaller communities. Rememdering birthdays and meeting in celebration of all your friends was much easier when we lived in villages of 100 people. Now we have cultural baggage from different economic developmental stages, and it creates a lot of extra work just to do what's culturally expected, as it doesn't fit the environment so many of us find ourselves in. In the end, that's just busy-work, we'll find ways to make those that matter to us know it.