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
To deep archives, perhaps. Privately owned players and storage is likely to bite the dust. Collections will have to be restarted. Books will be unscathed.
“That doesn’t happen to books unless caused by something outside the book. Magnetic or static charge media dissipates in time, all by itself. Physical devices become obsolete, and eventually there are no machines left that will read them.”
Perhaps you should toss your computer and be done with it ..
“Privately owned players and storage is likely to bite the dust. “
No, it won’t. EMP is overhyped Internet nerd porn, that’s all.
I’ll take the rational and intelligent approach: I’ll use my computer as I see fit and accumulate printed material as I desire. I’ll let the arrogant newbies fend for themselves.
” Electronic media’s lifetime is at the mercy of the marketing people and the transient nature of the media itself. To keep anything a long time one must transfer content from media to media, forever and often.”
My personal files from the early 80’s are essentially the same media as I use today. That was almost 40 years ago! So your statement is wrong.
“I’ll use my computer as I see fit “
I hope you are printing out all your computer files as one speck of dust could wipe them all out.
hmmm. Better start archiving all FR posts to paper also?
You continue to use 8” or 5-1/4 floppies? Eight inch Winchester disks? USB thumb drives and CD-ROMS didn’t exist then. Perhaps you use arrays of 1702 UV EPROMS?
” Books will be unscathed.”
Perhaps you have not heard of the major programs to archive books to digital media before they fall apart and cannot be saved.
No, I keep my hard drives closed and USB drives aren't affected much by dust. I do have storage units for media that are designed to extend the life of media.
Just why do you maintain your line of "conversation". My original point was merely that some printed books are not available on electronic media, and those books contain useful material not found elsewhere. Everything you are arguing is entirely irrelevant to that point.
“You continue to use 8” or 5-1/4 floppies? Eight inch Winchester disks? USB thumb drives and CD-ROMS didn’t exist then. “
Dude, PC’s had 3.5” hard drives in the 80’s.
But, if digital only floats your boat, enjoy that little boat of yours.
EOT
“Just why do you maintain your line of “conversation”. My original point was merely that some printed books are not available on electronic media, and those books contain useful material not found elsewhere. “
And my response was that there are things on electronic media that one can access easily that would take ten lifetimes to find in a book.
Then you went off on a tangent about how books were more reliable than electronic media since electronic media may self-destruct any moment so one should never keep electronic records.
Sonny, my debut into the computer world occurred in 1967. I’m still current.
You are picking nits to no useful purpose. On the other hand, locating certain books that are in print only can be of significant purpose. You can't see the forest because of the trees.
” I am also absolutely sure that scanned books will not always preserve the quality of a book’s content. Have you ever seen first generation books of photographs of Gemini/Apollo orbital operations or those taken on the moon? Scanned images do not come even close to the quality of that material. Most scanned books are of terrible quality compared to the books themselves.”
Dude, good scanning equipment provides resolutions finer than the best printers. I scanned all my family photos at resolutions better than the original prints.
Not only that, but software has the ability to make the scanned images BETTER than the originals!
Same with LP’s. Just finished digitizing a bunch of records from the 50’s and 60’s. Software really cleaned up the clicks.
“Things that are not on electronic media cannot be viewed on a computer. That means that there is information that cannot ever be found using a computer search, but can be found in books.”
If you can find the book and get access to it.
“Sonny, my debut into the computer world occurred in 1967. I’m still current”
Mine came in 1965, sonny.
“But, if digital only floats your boat, enjoy that little boat of yours.”
I never said that. My Audio Monitors provide very fine analog.
Are you assuming that I have never made use of a search engine or found useful material online? All I am pointing out is that the entirety of human knowledge IS NOT available on line. Youngsters tend to overlook printed material, and lose out on that content.
Well then, as one ancient fart to another, which was your favorite computer? I cut my teeth on the IBM 1130, then the 360. Soon I developed a love for the PDP-11 and then the 68000. I am still kicking myself in the butt for throwing out my Multibus 68000 computer.
I just acquired some gunsmith books and some machining texts that are not available online. They are wonderful, far better than any similar material I have found online. Online material seems to be lacking in detail and not very eloquently written. The older farts wrote better than people of today.
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