1. The Post Office: All they need to do is to stop funding the workers'
retirement fund for the next 75 years. No other government agency has such a
plan, and it is the reason for the Post Office's financial problems. Plus,
they could give back the banking function to the Post Office so that working
people won't be fleeced and the Post Office would have more funds. The
solution is tere. But Corporate America refuses.
2. The Check: One more way to take control of our lives, out of our hands.
This idea that computers should take over as many functions as possible, is
suicidal, given our climate problems. Big storms, no electricity, no
computers! And what about all of the hacking. Our government makes enemies
throughout the world, or sees them when they don't exist, is worried about
foreign countries interfereing with our elections, but is ready to digitize
our whole financial system and the rest of our lives.
3. Newspapers. No more real reporting. News on the internet will become just
like news on TV, no objective reporting, just entertainment aimed at various
sectors of the population.
4. The Book: I can't speak about print books anymore. But when there's no
electricity and your battery has run out, if you have no car or can't get to
it to recharge the battery, or there's no gas and the storm makes it
impossible for you to get more gas, you can read a print or braille book.
But your E reader, VR Stream, DTBM, or I Phone maybe useless.
5. The Land Line Telephone: Not only won't I give it up, but I won't switch
to one that works through cable TV in order to pay less money. During
Hurricane Sandy, when I was isolated, homebound, and had no electricity,
that was the only way I could communicate with other people. Not only that,
but have you noticed how poor the sound is on most cell phones, especially
when people are calling from outside their homes?
I can't even begin to deal with the rest of it. It's a world in which we are
owned and controlled by corporations. Never mentioned, are the plans to
substitute apps that diagnose your ailments for doctors or the plans to
watch old people who live alone through cameras and send in a robot to
intervene when there's a problem.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2016 10:37 AM
To: blind-democracy
Subject: [blind-democracy] do you agree or disagree
Ten Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime
block quote
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".
