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
If all my friends were whiners I would seek some new friends.
#2: it costs even more to process the card transactions than it does to process checks, at least, judging by atm and credit card fees.
#4: electronic gadgets can never offer the ability to quickly thumb through a book to read bits and pieces here and there. When I read a book, it is rare for me to read it from front to back. Instead, I thumb through it, looking for the fate of a particular character or finding out how a particular plot element develops, or rereading a part to get a better idea of the groundwork for a particular thread. Electronically, it is very hard to thumb through the pages. And if I find a part that I want to examine, it is difficult to go back to where I was. Until electronic books have that ease of looking forwards and backwards and accurately returning to the page the reader was last reading, print books have the advantage.
#5: until the sound quality on cell phones is at the quality of land line phones, I am not giving up the land line. I tell people not to call the cell, text me instead. If a call is important, I use the land line.
I put these objections in terms of my experience, but I think they apply to a lot of people. I can’t be the only person who does not read a book in sequential page order, or who finds cell phone sound quality almost impossible to understand.
Other things on the list... well, print news is largely a victim of its own arrogance, so good riddance to it. I hope that it cannot survive in electronic format, either; in a perfect world, fake news would be unsellable in any format. (Pulitzer prize to NYT for blatant fake news, seriously?)
That’s way in the future, as recent evidence shows that self-driving cars are still far from being ready for prime time, as they say.
Besides, there are still many people who love cars.
That’s way in the future, as recent evidence shows that self-driving cars are still far from being ready for prime time, as they say.
Besides, there are still many people who love cars.
Obviously you are not a user of new technology or you would not have posted that fake news.
I will fight to keep the “landline” until my cold hands are incinerated (due to lack of burial space, right?). Malthus carries on forward to doom because we humans are so ignorantly unbelieving.
Let me tell you why: Here in the BIG EMPTY as I call this area of PA without any major roads south of I-80, NE of Pittsburgh, W of Harrisburg, and N of Cumberland (excluding the interstate corridors) there is little to NO cell phone service for the poor, including me, who cannot afford the 4 and 5G phones. No Verizon service internet that is reliable...up and download speeds of 0.79 MBPS and 0.22 MBPS, for example, on 4/15/18. .
I am physically impaired and when the day comes I need an ambulance, I must have telephone service to call one. I have a land line and it costs almost $95/mos. Tat is almost 10% of my income. Geez.
Schumpeter's creative destruction (while originally borne out of a review of Marx's writings) has given us so much. Personally I am pretty happy that we have automobiles vs horses, washing machines vs rocks by the river, ATMs vs no cash on the weekends, central air conditioning vs heat stroke, cell phones vs land lines, Breitbart.com and FR vs The New York Times, Navigation systems vs being lost, and NICUs vs preemie funerals.
Furthermore, with every advance in snooping comes advances in cloaking and ways to avoid Big Brother. How many people worry about Google and Facebook yet eschew TOR or DuckDuckGo? Yea it requires a little work and maybe inconvenience but at least you won't be like the whiners on MSNBC.
As for music...well..when was the last time anyone got off their arse and went to a bar or club and caught 5 acts for $10? Sure a few of the bands will suck but you may find that the Death of Music is not here yet. Maybe you'll pay $10 for a CD or shirt and keep things moving. On a larger scale, go to a show of 1000-1500 people and catch some new acts. There is no shortage of new, interesting, music that is very good...there is equally no shortage of boring old people blogging that Rock is Dead while listening to The Stranger and The Last Waltz (yet again) on their iPad.
The future is what you make of it. I choose freewill, a little ingenuity, and to advance via peering through the windshield vs wistfully staring at the rear-view mirror.
My understanding is that operations make money, but congressional requirements to put away pension money beyond real necessity shoots off too much money. Anyway The “Post Office” can move in many directions. Reduce regular delivery to once a week. If you want to send that DVD slow, send it by media mail. Otherwise overnight it with FedEx or UPS. Eliminate the postal system as we know it, and contract all services to private businesses with a Postal Board overseeing contracts etc.
The post office does fine on an operational basis. The reason it can’t make money is that it is not allowed to accrue unfunded pension liabilities. If local governments were forced to operate on the same model, most of them would be bankrupt overnight.
Let me know when cell phones achieve the clear sound quality of land or even voip phones, okay?
I have a cell phone, but I don’t want or need a smart phone costing hundreds of dollars, and cell phone service is still more expensive than land lines.
Very easy to make that prediction - most of those things are already fading into oblivion.
I hope the book is the very last one to go. I want cursive to go away - it leads to meaningless scribbles that I can’t understand. Privacy is already gone. Dead and buried.
i don’t have a cellphone either. The people that push me to get one just want the convenience of reaching me whenever- and sometimes i want to be left alone.
Unless broadband exists throughout the country, the article is BS. None of the coverage maps I’ve seen are accurate. Landlines will continue to be the sole source for rural areas unless a cable supplier exists.
11. John McCain...tick tock
It’s called “Airplane Mode”. Totally under my control, whenever I want it. “Silent Mode” is my usual preference.
That’s way in the future, as recent evidence shows that self-driving cars are still far from being ready for prime time, as they say.
...
In some locations they are being used already without safety drivers.
I haven't had a land-line phone since 1998 and I often don't take calls if I don't feel like talking. Prior to that, I let my caller ID "screen" my calls. And before caller ID, it was my answering machine. Remember those days?
Hmmm...I do without 3 of the 4 things you mention. Can’t imagine wanting them.
And since I prefer hardbacks to paperbacks, I doubt I’ll start reading books on a phone/tablet thingie any time soon.
Agree with a lot of this - books for instance. It’s hard to find a brick-and-mortar bookstore these days. But I still prefer ‘real’ books and have not purchased a Kindle or Nook yet. As for the post office, it’s not going away any time soon. Every time I go to mail
A package it’s jammed with customers. And it has always been losing money....
You talking about cankles? Her days are numbered and even if she never gets indicted, I don’t see her living more that 5 years tops.
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