Endangered species?

I feel sorry for children who will be born the next few generations from now. All of the things we grew up with will be old and archaic or non-existent. They will miss out on so much stuff because the world has become so technologically complicated. They will never know what it is like to mail a letter to someone and the anticipation and excitement of receiving a letter in the mail a few weeks later. These days, there is email and instant messengers that provide for almost instantaneous communications, without all of the waiting of traditional letters. There are also cell phones so no matter where they go, they will always be seconds away from hearing the voice of a friend and will never have an excuse for being out late or car trouble and not calling for help or to check in.

There will be those who think milk comes from Wal-Mart because they have never seen an animal in their life, except for the standard household pets. They will miss out on seeing newborn animal not an hour after their birth. They will not know the satisfaction of growing a watermelon from a seed and watching all summer as the melon ripens; nor will thy know the sorrow of raccoons the handful of peaches on the tree just days before they are ripe. Areas of forest and nature are being converted into housing and businesses. All of the simple pleasures of life are being lost

Imagination and creativity will be stunted because they will all have mindless entertainment at hand "On-Demand". Cable television is in most households these days and once the television is turned on, hours and hours can disappear without the watcher noticing, like some sort of broadcasted trance. And movies are available On-Demand on cable and on internet streaming video sites. No waiting. No one has to read anymore because they just pop an audiobook on their iPod or stereo and it is read to them. Or they can buy and download their books online. Any number of things exist where people can forget how the US is making enemies with the whole world, and simply exist within the box that is their home. Exist without knowing all the simple joys of life enjoyed by previous generations.

And what about the good ol' fashioned novellist? Are we also an endangered species? With comic books and graphic novels, audio books and internet libraries, movies and innumberable stories on television, and computer and video games, and the internet are we also doomed to extinction? With images being fed straight to the child's eyes, will they even develop an imagination? Or will hardcover books grow old and musty and out-of-print as the writers who created them pass on, and the next generation will never open an encyclopedia, muchless a real life book because all the research they ever need for homework can always be found on the internet and all the entertainment they could ever want is fed to them in easier methods that are more entrancing and require less brain power....?

Is our generation itself the last to know what it is like to have these things? What it is like to live before the existence of all of these new technologies? Are we all an endangered species?