I find it amusing how close minded people can be when claiming machines dehumanize people; its a common line coming from concerned parents - especially towards the internet - I've heard my mother say countless times how everything about the internet is false; and that when using the internet you are relating to machines and not people.
Its certainly a contestable statement due to a very simple fact: machines cannot think. Then some kiddy thinking he's a sort of whiz about computers raises his hand frantically and yells: "What about AI!? you were wrong Ryu! duh!".
Not quite frantic kid. The term artificial inteligence, if anything, is flawed; there is an inteligence behind it yes, but its not artificial, its natural; AI codes are nothing more than programmed patterns, branch clauses (if X = 1 then do this) and so on; but how did they get inside that piece of silicon? some sort of ancient magic? no, I'd tell the frantic kid back there that a human put those patterns there because he had to so he'd have food up to his plate.
So in essence how artificial can be something made with such humane necessities behind it? the internet is the same thing - there are people behind each screen (unless of course you exclude email crawlers and such other programs, but they were first conceived by humans anyway, and for definite purposes).
And the humans behind each computer screen have their own motives, desires, aspirations, some good while others aren't, just like the people you know across the street. The lack of direct contact doesn't make the experience less humane, its all down to perception and depth (when any of you see Star Trek like teleporters attached to computer towers, do let me know).
To sum it up, machines don't dehumanize people, people dehumanize people, let someone break your heart to see how much of your humanity is swayed from you...did the internet do that? do we have evil HAL 9000's at our homes trying to kill us all? no ladies and gentlemen...the problem is and will always be humans themselves.