Goodbye to street photography?

Night traffic, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

(The photo here is not street photography but a photo of a street. I hope you don't mind. I was trying out what can be done handheld with the Panasonic LX3.)

There is an interesting discussion at Photo.net, the original posting was titled Is street photography fast becoming a thing of the past?: "Digital has indeed nothing to do with it. It only means that more people are taking photo's not that there are more photographers. Mediocrity rules, as you can clearly see on this site and all other photography related ones. Fastfood instead of quality food. [...] I think street photography has its place in the history of photography. However, most people I know pretty much think that photographing strangers on the street is a kind of stalking and think that its practitioners are weird and doing something unethical. "

I haven't really done street photography, although a few of my photos do show a street and people there. Partly I'm very much in favor of privacy, and don't want to disturb it, and partly I feel that I don't have an interest to walk the streets - I want to be off the streets if at all possible, out there in the nature.

However, I'm interested in this photography genre - it provides inspiration for taking photos of the family, especially the children. But I'm not showing those photos publicly.