10 things that will disappear in your lifetime

[Tom]

For those that do not have cable. How do you get internet? My big gripe is that in my area I have to have basic cable TV to get internet. DSL is not available in my neighborhood. Dial-up is too slow and Satellite and wireless is too expensive.

I have 10MB/s DSL in my neighborhood.

I've been without Cable/Sat since 2007 and love it.

Music won't die, but I wouldn't be surprised if CDs died. MANY composes thought Edison killed music with the record player.

The sooner the post office dies, the better. What a waste. FedEx and UPS have proven that the mail industry can be run at a profit, so it is time to get rid of the subsidized USPS.

[donlfaulkner]

On the plus side, basic cable is a lot cheaper than buying one of the big packages with lots of channels.

Lots of channels with still little of interest to watch. Been there, done that.

Patti,
we live in a hole which blocks all but 1 channel so we gave our antenna to the neighbors on top of the hill.


Guess I'll stay with cable/internet. (sigh)

[Jim Victory]

I'm already at some of those predictions, especially #10.

[brad]

1. The Post Office

Not likely in our lifetimes.. but probably our kids. Junk mail keeps it alive now and will for the near future.

2. The Check

Probably.. already has in a lot of ways. Do you know where your checkbook is? What's the last check you wrote? Online bill pay is also contributing to this.

3. The Newspaper

No doubt. At least as a print edition. The concept of the newspaper will always be around.

4. The Book

Nope. There will always be books. They don't require batteries.

5. The Land Line Telephone

I haven't had a land line in almost 8 years. More and more, this is becoming common.

6. Music

Absolutely and unequivocally wrong. Music will survive. New music will continue to be created. The Big Music Industry, RIAA, etc are going to go away as bands realize they don't need them to get their music in the hands of the public. And cutting out that middle man will make it cheaper as well. The end result will be more music than ever, quite possibly better and cheaper. The hard part will be sorting out the good stuff from the crap. Music was around before the Music Industry - Bach, Beethoven, etc.. and will be around long after.

Big Music will be relegated to selling those older pieces of music.

The Movie Industry isn't far behind.

7. Television

The traditional model is dying. It started with VCRs and has accelerated with DVRs and now On Demand over the Internet. People are no longer forced to choose which show they want to watch at 7pm on a Wednesday night. They can watch all of them thanks to DVRs and On Demand. The networks are going to have to realize this and monetize it to survive... and they will have to figure out a way to do it without commercial breaks as well since DVRs and On Demand make it too easy to skip them.

And again, the Movie Industry faces the same thing.

8. The "Things" That You Own

Now we're stretching to fill out the list... but Microsoft has said for years they want to adopt a software "rental" model. You don't buy software, but you rent it on an annual basis. They discovered people were tired of paying to upgrade every year so now those software companies want to adopt this new model so they can force them to do so. Adobe did it recently with Photoshop - if you don't own CS5, when CS6 comes out you'll have to pay the full price, not the upgrade price.

Physical ownership will be fine, at least in our lifetimes, so this should be more about the Electronic Things You Own.

9. Privacy

There will always be privacy. What is going away is the illusion of privacy. It was never private to post things online, to be out in public at the mall, or anything else like it. Stores have always collected data about what you purchase. Modern technology has just made it so easy to do it now, that the illusion of privacy is gone.

[tomdrink]

Adobe did it recently with Photoshop - if you don't own CS5, when CS6 comes out you'll have to pay the full price, not the upgrade price.

Brad - Adobe reversed that decision due to consumer concerns: You Spoke. Adobe Listened. | Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider.

TomD

[Jake]

How much does it cost to send a birthday or Christmas card via FedEx or UPS?

[wclavey]

I would like to think that books will disappear, with the exception of books as collectibles - - but I have used some form of electronic book since the early days of Peanut Press & the Palm Reader... but even with my wife's new kindle, there is still the issue of the quality of images that accompany the text. Even if you can zoom into the image and make it more usable, you lose the context of the text to view the image. If the images or illustrations play a big role in the content, then the ability to have access to a high quality image simultaneously to the text gives physical books the edge.

Many of the others, I can see happening to some degree... I think that the loss of privacy is inevitable... information about who we are, what we do, where we are, etc. is too valuable to not be exploited - - whether we like it or not.

[mdparthum]

Having been raised by a Letter Carrier, I am partial to the Post Office. I hope the Post Office never dies. Where else can you send a letter to a friend for 45 cents. The subsidies cover mostly postal worker's pensions etc. and the rest is covered by the cost of stamps and services. So, only about 3.5% is direct government subsidies as per the Congressional Budget Office and 3% from indirect subsidies. I am afraid that UPS and FedEx could not provide the same service as the USPS.

[mercphoto]

The sooner the post office dies, the better. What a waste. FedEx and UPS have proven that the mail industry can be run at a profit, so it is time to get rid of the subsidized USPS.

Not an apples to apples comparison though, as I pointed out in an earlier post of mine. Ask UPS to deliver something to nearly every mail box every day and see what changes they have to make in order to continue to be profitable.

Also, do you really want to UPS your Christmas cards to all your relatives?

[wclavey]

Not an apples to apples comparison though, as I pointed out in an earlier post of mine. Ask UPS to deliver something to nearly every mail box every day and see what changes they have to make in order to continue to be profitable.

As a transportation strategy consultant, I have to agree... independent of how well it is managed or priced, the ability and infrastructure to visit every street address in the country every day is an asset that companies like FedEx and UPS (both of whom have been my customers in the past) can realistically invest in creating in the near term. This is not to say that they may never do it - - too many things change to be able to make absolute predictions. But I could easily see a scenario where the outbound carrier part of the USPS is spun off as a contractible service and the remainder of the PO business disappears or morphs into something else. We probably all get packages now where UPS interlines freight to the USPS at key points around the country. I see that as a preliminary version of this ultimate productizing of the home delivery "asset" from the USPS.

[Tom]

Not an apples to apples comparison though, as I pointed out in an earlier post of mine. Ask UPS to deliver something to nearly every mail box every day and see what changes they have to make in order to continue to be profitable.

Also, do you really want to UPS your Christmas cards to all your relatives?

I would argue that delivering Christmas cards and junk mail to every address in America 6 days a week is not an absolute necessity in today's modern world.

[mdparthum]

I would argue that delivering Christmas cards and junk mail to every address in America 6 days a week is not an absolute necessity in today's modern world.

But it is that Junk Mail that provides the revenue to help deliver everything else at a cheaper rate. Let's just say that they are the commercials of our mail. I personally love getting Christmas cards through the mail. It's that personal touch from a person I care about. I hate emailed cards or whatever because they just aren't the same. And the sale flyers that come around benefit me with coupons and other stuff. Not to mention the lost kid or abducted children flyers.

This also reminds me of the Seinfeld expisode where Kramer stops his mail delivery and then gets a call from the Post Master General. LOL! Good stuff.

I could see giving up mail delivery on Saturdays to help cut costs too.

[brad]

Brad - Adobe reversed that decision due to consumer concerns: You Spoke. Adobe Listened. | Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider.

Awesome. I did miss that. But still, the concept is there... what they want to do is "guarantee" that annual income flow... they can't do that if they leave the upgrade choice in the hands of the consumer. If they do that, then they have to constantly innovate in ways that will make the user want to upgrade every year... something they are afraid they cannot maintain.

However, if they adopt a model that forces them to upgrade, either via this reversed policy or the subscription model that Microsoft has been proposing for 10 or more years, then they can much better predict their annual cash flow.....

.... and they save lots of money on that pesky (and expensive) R&D department that churns out those new features. In other words, innovation dies.

[wclavey]

But it is that Junk Mail that provides the revenue to help deliver everything else at a cheaper rate. Let's just say that they are the commercials of our mail. I personally love getting Christmas cards through the mail. It's that personal touch from a person I care about. I hate emailed cards or whatever because they just aren't the same. And the sale flyers that come around benefit me with coupons and other stuff. Not to mention the lost kid or abducted children flyers.

This also reminds me of the Seinfeld expisode where Kramer stops his mail delivery and then gets a call from the Post Master General. LOL! Good stuff.

I could see giving up mail delivery on Saturdays to help cut costs too.

Here is an idea... how about a system where the PO collects the revenue for all the junk mail that, as you correctly point out, keeps the cost of the first class mail lower, but then charges me $10/month to place that junk mail directly into a recycle bin. I have never, and never will, read that junk mail - - it goes from the mailbox directly to the recycling bin in my garage. So why have the delivery carrier from the PO carry it out here only for me to throw it away? I will pay them to recycle it - - they will get paid twice for the same product and they will make me extremely happy in the process.

[DLunt]

We have internet through Comcast. When we dropped cable, they upped the high speed internet from $20 to $35, but that's a lot cheaper than cable + internet. We subscribe to Netflix and on rare occasion buy a movie thru Amazon. We just have a VHF and a UHF antenae for regular TV. Don't miss cable at all. Never had time to watch it anyway.

No land line here either and even though I'm old as dirt, I no longer get the newspaper either. Idiot paperboy/girl/creature kept throwing it in the wet grass or under the car. Don't miss that either.

You sound just like me. I have my internet through Charter. I think it's like $39 a month with all the taxes. Not cheap but much cheaper than having it with cable t.v. Before I was paying $100 - $110 a month just for the t.v. package. I have had Charter, Dish, and uVerse and they were all in that range. I think my intenet only went up $10 a month by not having it bundled with t.v. services.