Technology is a marvelous thing. It enhances, enriches and even ennobles our lives, freeing us from drudgeries that dragged down our forebears and made the human experience drab and mundane for many millions.

The automobile, the airplane, television, movies --these and many other technical advances have fundamentally altered the course of man's history, and dramatically improved the quality of his life, just within the last hundred years.

Progress has its price, though, and old-style coin collecting may be among the victims paying part of that price in the 1990s.

I had sensed this for quite a while and addressed some of its symptoms in a column a few years ago lamenting the decline of local coin clubs and coin shows across the nation. The bigger picture, however, didn't really emerge into sharp, clear focus for me until I had a wide-ranging conversation with Q. David Bowers, who surely ranks not only as one of the most prolific writers in numismatics but also as one of the most profound thinkers.

Bowers, too, is concerned about the decline in coin club membership and coin show attendance. He traces it, however, not so much to deepening disenchantment with coins, stemming perhaps from the coin market's malaise in recent years, but rather to growing preoccupation with alternative forms of recreation -- notably on-line computer networks and videocassettes. In short, he regards it as a side effect of technology.

"What I see happening," Bowers said, "is that traditional coin clubs -- the kind that meet Tuesday evening at the Elks lodge or something -- are decreasing in number because more people are spending time at home with their personal computers or VCRs, their 200-channel TV satellite receivers and so forth.

"This same situation has affected almost every fraternal organization and every social group in existence -- the Elks, the Masons, all the different clubs. It's one of the new realities of life in the 1990s."

Yet, while he regrets the passing -- or at least the eclipsing -- of traditional forms of organized numismatics, Bowers sees this not as the end of the line for coin clubs and shows, but rather as a turn in a new direction.

"While the all-purpose coin club -- the social-gathering coin club -- has been on the decrease," he pointed out, "the special-interest club has been on the increase. Specialized societies now exist, and have for some time, for tokens and medals, Indian cents, large cents, Colonials, paper money, half dollars, Liberty Seated coins, early coins by John Reich and many, many other different specialties. And these clubs are attracting growing memberships and putting out increasingly excellent journals, where people are sharing their finds and their enthusiasm.

"I think this is good for the collector end of the hobby. It gives collectors affinity groups. And it's probably the same sort of thing we've seen in the publishing field in recent years, where specialty magazines are doing better now than general-interest magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. It's become a specialty world."

I confess that I myself spend far more time today "chatting" on line on my personal computer than mingling with fellow hobbyists at coin club meetings and shows. And many other coin collectors seem to be doing likewise. There are even on-line coin clubs these days. Communicating by e-mail and sending instant messages to people of similar interests are simply more convenient than trudging out in the snow on a cold winter night to attend a meeting. Undoubtedly, the novelty also plays a part in the burgeoning appeal of on-line services.

I find Dave Bowers' analysis reassuring; I much prefer to think of our hobby as reinventing itself, rather than being consigned to history's dustbin. Still, it's always difficult to see the old ways fade, even when technology holds forth the promise of brighter tomorrows.