Posted on 04/22/2018 6:13:57 AM PDT by sodpoodle
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.
All we will have left that which can't be changed.......are our "Memories".
Logic is dead. Excellence is punished. Mediocrity is rewarded. And dependency is to be revered.. This is present-day North America. When crooks rob banks they go to prison. When they rob the taxpayer they get re-elected
And how long would they exist if they delivered without adequate postage?
I clicked on it to express my opinion on articles that refer to “our lifetime”,but I didn’t read it————that’s done a lot around here,I’m surprised you have never noticed it before.
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4Ltr
I’ve been through the Big Empty—Lewisburg, Hughesville, Dushore, Towanda, etc. Beautiful country, and probably politically “red.”
And that landline puts out a healthy 40 volts DC. There are many ways to adapt that for 12 volt DC lighting in the house and many other 12 volt applications during power outages.
Actually, that is simply not true.
Dude, my car charger was hardwired at the factory and my home chargers have only been plugged in on the day I got them.
When I come home I just set the phone down on the chafter. The phone is never plugged in.
Not really.
If you leaf through a book, you can stop wherever an interesting word or phrase catches your eye. With an electronic book, you either have to rapidly slide the pages across with your finger, which I suppose is good finger exercise, but you can’t really go through the pages very fast if you want to see any words, and it takes a tediously long time to move any significant number of pages. Or you can make the pages small, in which case, you can move several of them at a time, but you can’t see any of the words. Being able to see the words and rapidly thumb through is essential for my reading style. And using the word search function does not help. Also, I remember parts of books by where they are in relation to the covers, whether they are on the left or right page, the shape of the paragraph and words, etc., qualities which are lacking or severely limited in electronic format.
“Reason has been replaced by emotion.”
Reason has been replaced by acceptance. What you are told by sources in power is accepted as the truth. And their only failures are when they get caught in their BS and they have to say, “Go back to rule one, where I say so.”
rwood
Do you know the difference between a banjo and an onion? Nobody cries when you chop up a banjo.
I agree this remains in the future. But notice that not so long ago, many thought computers couldn’t play chess above the level of top grandmasters, and would never beat the world champion. So the world was shocked when IBM’s Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1999. Today, less than 20 years later, anyone can download chess engines to their smartphone which can destroy all human chess players.
Also notice that even fewer years ago, it was predicted that computers would *never* learn to play Go at the level of world champions. Needless to say, AlphaGo has since beaten the world champion.
In comparison to playing chess or Go, it wouldn’t seem that driving a car safely is that difficult.
Actually it is.
Landlines are powered by lead-acid batteries in the central office. They must be charged. They will be depleted in a few days.
I disagree about music. It is one of the most eternal, primal experiences we have and it will NEVER disappear. The music industry is as {bleeped} as it has ever been, full of whores and thieves, but music is still thriving and always will. The industry itself has no choice but to get better. Musicians are gifted from Gd and hard work. They will always be. I have some deep connections to the industry and I see young people who want to change it in good ways, and tech will end up helping (and changing things) just like it does in every facet of life.
I spend a lot of time with people with Alzheimer’s and there is something magical about seeing an old, neurologically broken person in diapers who can’t tell you what Day year or month it is sitting down before the piano and playing an elegant concerto like they did at 25.
I would like to add another thing that is disappearing. That is losing “value.” Antiques. Young people (even including myself and I’m not all that young) have zero interest in antiques for antiques’ sake. Antiques Road Show is a farce now because even though “a similar piece sold at auction once for $10,000,” in 2018 NO ONE WANTS YOURS. Trust me on that one. (However, if you do love American antiques and wish to spend a lot of $ buying them, please don’t hesitate to call me... ;))
Let’s see, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, maybe, and ended 20 years ago but people just started noticing.
My granddaughter wnet to a college in that area and she enjoyed it——once she got used to it, -——she is basically a city person.
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Plus your fingers love twirling the dial, and you love chatting while wrapping yourself in the curly cord.
Lists of Things that will Disappear will disappear because they are ALWAYS wrong.
Then here is one they never think of: Electronic devices go obsolete in a few short years. Who among you can still read your 8" or 5-1/4" floppy disks? Now even the CD-ROM is getting to be a hit-or-miss way to keep information. The point is, none of these electronic devices will stay in service long enough to make information available even ten years later. I have read from 100 year old books. They continue to work for a very long time. They are what we call "reliable".
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