Jeffrey McFadden wrote:I find it mildly interesting that two of the most common comments recurring on here are "I hope the pedal steel doesn't fade away," and "That's not how we played country in 1955!"
Quoting myself...
Think of the evolution of society, particularly of rural society, where country music came from.
The year I turned 12 - 1959 - Missouri, where I grew up and still live, had in the neighborhood of 12 to 16 times as many farms, and therefore farm / rural families, as it does today.
Many, most of, those farms were 160 acres or fewer. America did not yet have an Interstate Highway System, which was created by legislation in 1956 but was not visible anywhere within the first 3 years. Every US highway went dead through the middle of every country town, each of which prospered by providing goods and services for the tens of thousands of farm families who lived immediately around them.
I can remember haystacks, literal haystacks, feeding 6 to 10 head cattle herds through winters.
Passenger rail still existed. My family regularly traveled from Missouri to Iowa by train.
All of country music's roots lay in that environment. 
Today nearly every economically viable farm in Missouri pushes or exceeds 1000 acres. Over 90% of the families moved to the city. The remaining farmers are almost all old men. There is no customer base to support small towns, and highways avoid them like a plague. 
The bars where country music was invented all vanished with the towns they were in, with the families who ate and drank there.
Personally I think that we have lost most of what was valuable in our culture in my lifetime. We lost it to industry, speed, "efficiency." 
Can it be any surprise that the music that culture created has mostly vanished? 
Traditional country music will never die as long as all of you guys and gals keep playing it, and long may you wave. As for what we've lost, music is just one expression of it.
One man's opinion.