[PietdeVries]

This is just technological progress, right..?

With the centrally heated house rising, so we forgot the skill (and pleasure) to heat your house with a fire (coal, wood). We buy fully-prepared meals in the supermarket - no longer willing to go to three or four separate shops to buy the ingredients and spend time at home putting them together. Even bread-making at home has been replaced by a machine that does it for you.

Technology takes over, and there are always people that think this is a bad thing. But it's of all times and started before our ancestors decided to walk upright...

[cafard]

The skill and pleasure of heating your house with coal? The house my mother grew up in had a coal furnace in it through sometime in the 1960s, and on cold mornings somebody had to be the first out of bed to get the furnace going. I don't know who that person was--probably an uncle--but I doubt he missed the chance to exercise the skill.

[HPsquared]

At the end of the day people want transportation, they want meals, perhaps fresh bread. How they are provided is an implementation detail.