Posted on 08/03/2017 1:14:19 PM PDT by sodpoodle
Ten Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime
This is USA oriented, but Canada and 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.
Maybe not in the seniors of today lifetimes but more likely in our childrens.
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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 "catalog 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
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 of that which can't be changed.......are our "Memories."
And some of us have already lost them!
The Post Office is one of the most needless things in our lives. Almost as much as the federal dept of education and nancy pelosi.
Buying the music gets you a far better listening experience than what you’d get on YouTube. That said, unless you really like a given piece of music, just saving something that you find appealing to your YouTube “liked” videos will build a library of sorts, with the exception of videos being deleted which happens.
I consciously avoided Win 10 for myself and turned off cloud on my wire’s Win 8 machine. The concept just reeks invasive snooping.
It all doesn’t matter!
Al gore tells us we will all be dead anyway.
The post office and military are the only constitutionally mandated things. I don’t see either going.
My children and most of their friends are avid readers and they all have stopped reading the tablets and readers and have returned to real books.
When I have talked to them they say they like to have a book in hand rather than a tablet and also they can more easily go back to a previous page to re-read something than search for using a tablet.
Where have you been?
It’s alright, we know where you’ve been.
Ebooks cannot be highlighted.
It is some nerd geek, poor idea about highlighting.
Ebooks are for fiction only, where a billion other books make life worse, with extra clutter.
The author seems gleeful at the prospect of entering an era without physical articlfacts left behind.
... with the exception of videos being deleted which happens.
++++
You are correct about that. I went looking for the original version of Glen Frey’s “You belong to the city”. Great video. Apparently gone forever. If it’s not on YouTube it might as well not exist.
Yup
The very reason we love books they do too
Overzealous attempts to protect copyright. Prince videos are notorious for that. You could probably find that video on the Eagles website if they’re smart. Hiding it from the public eye due to copyright is self-defeating. They could try to monetize it, small fee for download of a high resolution copy, but then they lose control of distribution, it can be emailed and shared. The whole prior model of the music industry and the big studios has come apart, and some are flailing about trying to hold on, and only offending their fans and turning off potential new ones in the process.
And history books online are soooo much easier to alter when the mood strikes the fancy of those "in charge". (Who are we at war with?)
Overzealous attempts to protect copyright.
++++
Yep. But it is still surprising to me that it not more widespread.
Look at the Roy Orbison Black & White Night video on YouTube. I bet it still sells as a DVD. (They sold me one long ago). But you can watch it for free on YouTube.
Strange business model.
That Black & White Night Roy Orbison series is a true classic filled with very notable musicians above and beyond Roy Orbison himself, it’s truly awesome and just about any aficionado of music who appreciates him would like to have the best copy of that performance that can be acquired, so I’d imagine they do rather well selling them. Leaving the low resolution copies up on YouTube actually sell the high resolution copies. I know I was completely unaware of it, before I saw it on YouTube.
When will smoking be good for me?
Sure, if you censor and block access to foreign sites.
Until that happens, more people probably have more access to old books now than ever before.
Dang, I just did normal dating, got married and got a wristwatch all in the last 4 years.
That may or may not be true
It is a constitutionally mandated service
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