9 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 cheque. 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 As We Know It
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. Local Storage
Many of the very possessions that we used to own now 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.

9. 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.

All we will have left that can't be changed are memories.

Comments

[agimarc]

I have a brother in the music business who has been talking about this for years. It is not music that will die, but the business model used by the music industry that is toast.

According to him, CD / MP3 sales are now intended to funnel people into concerts, and the real money making platform for the record companies are the concerts and band paraphernalia (t-shirts, clothing, etc).

One of the things he did at a radio station in Dallas was produce a series of CDs in the early 1990s called Tales from the Edge. They were compilations of music from local bands – great music for maybe $5/pop. He did versions for San Diego (Saint Doug) and San Francisco. These CDs demonstrate that the music and creativity is out there as it always has been.

Yet there are more bands out there than ever, making more music than ever. The problem is getting it distributed. An analog to this is the gatekeeping ability of the old line, mainstream press, which exercised real power in the information world by what was NOT reported rather than what they did report. And like the newspapers and mainstream media, the Army of Davids tools available to us all is destroying their business model.

Some bands are starting to release music directly to the web and ask for donations per download or afterward. This cuts out the record companies completely – which is why they have been so heavy handed defending their turf via DOMA legislation and RIAA lawsuits. This is a failing strategy, as it is never a good idea to stomp all over your customers.

I think you are going to see this all transition to the web via downloadable music and video which will give us more choices than we ever thought possible. Cheers -

[Fernando Poo]

I agree with agimarc’s comments, for the most part. It’s not illegal downloads, its cookie-cutter music. When you buy mainstream music, 2 or 3 songs on the CD are quality, and the rest is mediocre or worse. Even in the 70′s and 80′s, this was the case. Go listen to “Who’s Next”, probably one of the greatest albums of all time. Half of it is crap.

Now, when I find a group, there *may* be 1 or two “bad” songs on a CD. By “bad” I mean “okay, but too slow for my taste”. As agimarc said, there are more bands making more music, and it’s better than ever.

[kim hosea]

What other items are subject to disappear due to the advancement of technology?