Technology affects writing the same way it affects everything else. We jump upon whatever resources are the most avaliable and convinient. Especially with language as humans are very social with a growing need to communicate their deepest and most immediate thoughts. Hense, as Baron expressed, one of the benifits of all of this electronic communication is that nearly anyone can publish their thoughts and ideas for all the world to see by simply throwing it out into cyberspace. There's no putting it through a publisher who decides whether or not it's good enough for other people to read; all is eligable. I guess that's why blogs are so popular these days. You can publish your own diary for cheap.

I believe that all of this fear of corrupting the language is merely sentimentality and a fear of change. And I do not accuse, as I myself am guilty of this in every possible respect. The older ones embrace the old-fashoined methods because embedded in them are our memories and our history; our heritage and everything that has made us what we are today. Young ones embrace the new methods, hungry to make these memories and establish our own history-- and once this is done, and we are older, we will cling to the framework that made it so. And, of course, nobody likes change. After going through everything you've already gone through; to have so much experience elsewhere, and to feel you are now obligated to completely revise your way of thinking and living. To have to learn something seemingly so complicated, even though in truth it may not be complicated at all. It only seems so.
For a school assignment I purchased one of these speach-to-text programs. It was actually very efficient, marking punctuation, and spelling all words correctly save for one in one paragraph. I do not think that the written language would be lost to such things. We still write, we still have caligraphy, some still learn Greek and Latin, and it's simple to purchase and old-fashoined (but modern designed) pen and ink-bottle. It's been hundreds of years, and all is not lost. And anything we want to know is translated into whatever form of communication we currently have. The old oral stories were written down, then printed, then typed, and are now avaliable online. What does it matter how it is expressed so long as we understand?

And as for 'Amy's Answering Machine'... if I had a mother like that, leaving constant embarassing messages, I'd go on the witness protection program. I'd lose my mind; That's all I can say.