Ten Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime
This is USA oriented, but Canada & the
rest will not be far behind. Whether
these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come.
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.
All we will have left that can't be changed
are "Memories".
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