Ten Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime
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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. TelevisionRevenues
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".
