9 Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime

9 Things That Will  Disappear In Our Lifetime Whether  these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we  adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come.   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  Cheque Britain  is already laying the groundwork to do away with cheque by  2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a  year to process cheques. 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   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. 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". And  then probably Alzheimers will take that away from you  too!