DISAPPEARING ACT

9 Things  That Will Disappear In Our  Lifetime

      

Ready or not, here they  come ..... RATHER, THERE THEY GO!

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  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. TV News Media is running the Country.(Politics) 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 !