Ten Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime
1. The Post Office
Get ready to imagine a world without the post
office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way
to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum
revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is
junk mail and bills.
2. The Check
Britain is already laying the groundwork to do
away with check by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of
dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions
will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the
death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never
received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
3. The Newspaper
The younger generation simply doesn't read the
newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print
edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As
for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile
Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine
publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the
major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid
subscription services.
4. The Book
You say you will never give up the physical
book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages I said the
same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy
CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums
for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The
same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and
even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than
half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you
start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that
you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget
that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line Telephone
Unless you have a large family and make a lot
of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply
because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that
extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers
using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.
6. Music
This is one of the saddest parts of the change
story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because
of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given
a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and
corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates
are simply self-destructing Over 40% of the music purchased today is
"catalogue items," meaning traditional music that the public is
familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the
live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic
further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve
Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."
7. Television Revenues
To the networks are down dramatically. Not
just because of the economy. People are watching
TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games
and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent
watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the
lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials
run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of
it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let
the people choose what they want to watch online
and through Netflix.
8. The "Things" That You Own
Many of the very possessions that we used to
own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future.
They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has
a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your
software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But
all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing
up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn
on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows,
Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you
click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save
something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly
subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can
access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device.
That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this
"stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big
"Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and
whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out
that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open
up a CD case and pull out the insert.
9. Joined Handwriting (Cursive Writing)
Already gone in some schools who no longer
teach "joined handwriting" because nearly everything is done now on
computers or keyboards of some type (pun not intended)
10. Privacy
If there ever was a concept that we can look
back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been
gone for a long time anyway.. There are cameras on the street, in most of
the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you
can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are,
right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy
something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change
to reflect those habits.. "They" will try to get you to buy
something else. Again and again and again.
