Posted on 03/18/2017 6:04:20 PM PDT by upchuck
Complete article here: http://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/business/T057-S001-7-things-that-will-soon-disappear/index.html
Quick list:
1. Keys - Keys, at least in the sense of a piece of brass cut to a specific shape, are going away.
2. Blackouts - Frustrating power outages that leave people with fridges full of ruined food are on their way out as our electrical grid becomes increasingly intelligent – and resilient.
3. Fast-food workers - Burger-flippers have targets on their backs as fast-food executives are eager to replace them with machines, particularly as minimum wages in a variety of states are set to rise to $15.
4. The clutch pedal - Every year it seems that an additional car model loses the manual transmission option. Even the Ford F-150 pickup truck can’t be purchased with a stick anymore.
5. College textbooks - By the end of this decade, digital formats for tablets and e-readers will displace physical books for assigned reading on college campuses. K–12 schools won’t be far behind, though they’ll mostly stick with larger computers as their platform of choice.
6. Dial-up Internet - According to a study from the Pew Foundation, only 3% of U.S. households went online via a dial-up connection in 2013. Thirteen years before that, only 3% had broadband (Today, 70% have home broadband). Massive federal spending on broadband initiatives, passed during the last recession to encourage economic recovery, has helped considerably.
7. The plow - Modern farmers have little use for it. It provides a deep tillage that turns up too much soil, encouraging erosion because the plow leaves no plant material on the surface to stop wind and rain water from carrying the soil away. It also requires a huge amount of diesel fuel to plow, compared with other tillage methods, cutting into farmers' profits. The final straw: It releases more carbon dioxide into the air than other tillage methods.
8. Your neighborhood mail collection box - The amount of mail people are sending is plummeting, down 57% from 2004 to 2015 for stamped first-class pieces. So, around the country, the U.S. Postal Service has been cutting back on those iconic blue collection boxes. The number has fallen by more than half since the mid 1980s. Since it costs time and fuel for mail carriers to stop by each one, the USPS monitors usage and pulls out boxes that don't see enough traffic.
9. Your privacy - If you are online, you had better assume that you already have no privacy and act accordingly. Every mouse click and keystroke is tracked, logged and potentially analyzed and eventually used by Web site product managers, marketers, hackers and others. To use most services, users have to opt-in to lengthy terms and conditions that allow their data to be crunched by all sorts of actors.
10. The incandescent lightbulb - No, government energy cops are not coming for your bulbs. But the traditional incandescent lightbulb that traces its roots back to Thomas Edison is definitely on its way out. As of January 1, 2014, the manufacture and importation of 40- to 100-watt incandescent bulbs became illegal in the U.S., part of a much broader effort to get Americans to use less electricity.
#11: Lists of things that will disappear,
along with...
#12: Lists on the internet that take 10 or 20 or 30 or 50 or more pages that take those many page turns in order to get to the end, while forcing people to suffer through 5-10 pieces of advertising on each page. (Hopefully).
Those are the rough duty bulbs for garage door openers.
I think that's the size I use. Check it out in the morning.
2,3,7,10, b.s..
Just because they say it doesn’t mean it will come to pass.
Most futurists are projectors.
I can replace a clutch disk at home. Fixing a 10 speed auto, not so much.
Ted Kaczynski (The Unabomber) was a terrorist and I would never condone his targeting of innocent (though not random) persons. In the run-up to the 2000 election some on the right cherry-picked his manifesto and compared some of his environmentally related comments to those of Al Gore, and since then Kaczynski has been marginalized as another leftist whacko.
I think we on the right are mistaken to do so. I was in law enforcement in the 90s and was fascinated by the concept of psychological profiling. I read everything I could get my hands on and when the manifesto was published in '95, I read it deeply to see what could be gleaned from it. In 2000, when we on the right were comparing excerpts from his manifesto, I thought it was a bad idea, because one could just as easily have cherry picked it for phrases that could have been compared to the writings of Rush Limbaugh, Ayn Rand, William Buckley or any other person of a conservative/libertarian bent, particularly his tirades against political correctness, modern leftism and the cult of victimhood, though he did also address problems with conservatism as well, and one of these was the embrace of technology, which would bring about the very social changes conservatives proclaimed to stand against. Kaczynski also warned about the wholesale loss of personal privacy that would be brought about by technology.
Once again, I want to be perfectly clear that I am not in any way, shape or form defending the man's methodology or murderous acts. He is right where he belongs in the Supermax. I am simply saying that in 2017, any reasonable person who goes back and takes another look at his manifesto will find substantial parts of it to have been rather prescient.
I still write snail mail, on good letter paper, with a fountain pen. I'm NOT giving any of that up, nor my books, keys, DVDs, non migraine inducing light bulbs! I'd LOVE to give up power outages, but I don't see that happening...EVER.
Number 2 for anybody who pays attention to these things will be more and more likely. Crickey, just read up on the power problems and the cause of them in south australia
As the items you list I have not used for years
College text books are the only scam larger and more costly than global warming
But then...each to his or her own.
But trust me, everyone will ALWAYS need to sign their names to things ( and don't tell me about facial recognition, nor fingerprints, or whatever ), books, especially first editions, and signed ones, will only go up in value, the same is true re coins, pens ( good ones, such as Mont Blanc and others ), also increase in value since they too are collectables.
Just because you don't avail yourself of certain things, doesn't mean that others don't still use/want them.
Now you have to drive a longish distance to the post office, and wait and wait in line.
Leni
Books are becoming obsolete and I say that as someone who loves books, collected them, and when I was a lot younger, that was pretty much all I would move from place to place. Now I have a huge library on my kindle. Its easier to read and I can carry it anywhere. And for example, I can buy the complete works of Jane Austin for $.99. That’s one dollar for those of you in Rio Linda.
Really? Gas or Diesel?
Does the author really not see the contradiction in those two statements?
Common sense and logic are on their way out.
“No author.” Something to hide here, as well as the anonymous author is a leftist. “The final straw: It releases more carbon dioxide into the air than other tillage methods.” Nonsense. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but absolutely essential for plant growth. Concern for the environment has given way to socialist crap and lies. Never let the truth get in the way of the leftist commie agenda.
“But trust me, everyone will ALWAYS need to sign their names to things”
Electronic documentation, electronic signatures are already here.
Vintage Singer sewing machines also go up in value but that doesn’t mean people use them.
One of my clients moved into a newly renovated medical office building recently. Lots of doors in their suite of offices and all unlock with a card that you swipe across a small square above the door knob/handle. If you do it right, a light flashes green and the door can be opened/closed. Absolutely no locks which require keys. The door the patient’s use has a dead bolt on the inside which they unlock each morning so patients can enter the waiting room and lock at night.
Understand everything links to a system in the security guard’s office on the first floor so it is possible to track whose card is being used on what door and when. Staff is really complaining about the system as they always have to make sure they have their card with them and have locked themselves out of their office on occasion.
“Why not? “
I use ebooks and audiobooks. Free at the public library and instantly available (depending on demand).
Keys. My wife’s car is keyless.
My car is keyless.
My brother just bought a keyless car and also loves it!
Car doors lock at a touch and unlock automatically.
Haven’t used the front door key but once or twice since we bought the house.
Blackouts will disappear?
That is just stupid. I agree. And it is very arrogant.
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