Alan Watts Foretold Our Future - Decades Ago

I'm reading a book* of Alan Watts' from 1966 and come across this disturbingly prescient passage.

"... increasing efficiency of of communication ... can, instead of liberating us into the air like birds, fix us to the ground like toadstools. All information will come in by super-realistic television and other electronic devices as yet in the planning stage or barely imagined. In one way this will enable the individual to extend himself anywhere without moving his body ... But this will be a new kind of individual - an individual with a colossal external nervous system reaching out and out into infinity. And this electronic nervous system will be so interconnected that all individuals plugged in will tend to share the same thoughts, the same feelings, and the same experiences. There may be specialized types, just as there are specialized cells and organs in our bodies. For the tendency will be for all individuals to coalesce into a single bio-electronic body."

Who is he calling a toadstool?

*The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are