Technically speaking, I believe that it is indeed ingrained within human nature.
Technology does play its part in facilitating our need for instant pleasure; anyone who doubts this, just think of the internet and the kind of website you're on right now.
And yes, we are rushing towards the grave given what I can understand. An example that come to mind for me is something I see everyday: Drivers. Those people who swerve in and out of lanes, speed up to pass you so they don't have to pull in behind you, or use an empty lane to simple get ahead of someone else.
I think it's more so the general human desire to lead, to not follow, to get things first that drive us in those regards. To simply be kind and pull in behind someone, rather than having to cut them off, suggests that we are being submissive to the person...And as such, we lose some of the dominance we feel we have through our existence.
But, once you leave psychology out of it, what is the purpose of that? By cutting that person off, still using the driver example, did they really save any time in their daily commute? Or was the difference negligible? I think that the difference doesn't make a difference, in that no possible amount of time could be saved by that one action and as such, it was pretty much a useless action in the first place.
But you do have to wonder, why rush like that at all then? Humans are objective oriented creatures. We like to have a purpose and we like to understand it. Also, we feel a need to assign purpose and clear objectives to the things we do. New Years Resolutions are a perfect example of this, an object that we seek to accomplish within the next year, with next New Years as a sort of end date to complete the objective.
Religion, is another example. Regardless of whether or not you believe, that's not the topic at hand here, but religion essentially prescribes a purpose to ourselves as a species. Its easy to come up with objectives and purpose if we believe that we were created to be that way. It's the ultimate reason/objective.
Essentially, instant gratification is in itself an objective. We do what ever we can to guarantee the greatest pleasure possible. Philosophers have noticed it for years, that we seek to maximize our pleasure and possibility for pleasure, while attempting to minimize discomfort.
This is somewhat of a contradiction, given that we are comfortable causing discomfort to others so long as pleasure is given to us. We don't care so long as we receive the pleasure, but complain and cry foul when we receive the discomfort for someone else's pleasure.
So, ultimately instant gratification is nothing more than another objective that we create for ourselves as a race to add some purpose and meaning to our rather ordinary lives. To some extent, by pursuing nothing but the quickest and therefore best things in life, we are indeed shortening our living experience by taking years of purpose and cramming it into months or days of pleasure.
