Comments on the writing machines

It just occurred to me while reading some other material for this class and also in taking a second look at Ed's post that the reason I don't believe that new media will eliminate the written word is because it seems to be instinctive to human nature to desire to communicate via language. I could be wrong and it could be that communication through other media will eventually take the place of this but that doesn't seem to be the trend. It seems that the more "new" media there that exists, the more "things" there are to write about. I say this partly as a reaction to research for background material for the VR in education short paper. Does anyone else find it ironic that there are hundreds of papers on the subject? Even though these games and virtual media should be able to stand on their own (and be "worth 1,000 words") they have opened a Pandora's box of "old media" to try to explain the new.