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. What will we do when the mail doesn't arrive? I will miss that. Since we have moved into our current home about 15 years ago there hasn't been a single day that we didn't get at least 1 piece of junk mail, bill or a card. Can't imagine my driveway without that big old mailbox at the end of it.
2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks 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. I can't imagine what all those people who won't pay by credit card online will do. You won't be able to send a check by mail for an item. I guess you will have to package the check in a box so you can send it UPS.
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. I can't imagine the world without a newspaper that you have to pick up at the end of your drive. I know it is wet some days and some days you can't find it, but sitting in my lounge chair with the cat on my lap reading the paper is one of my daily pleasures. Please don't take that away from an old man.
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 almost half that of a hard-cover or paperback 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. My only complaint is you can't physically see how far you are in the book in order to see if you want to stay up and finish the book tonight or wait until tomorrow and finish it. I realize that my Kindle tells me the % of the book that I have read, but that's not the same to me. I do love my Kindle, or rather the one I bought for my wife. But, I do realize that with the decline in the printing of newspapers and books, my two sons will be affected, since they are both in the printing industry. How long can that industry survive. I hope for a long time, but then I'm an optimist!
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. I would miss the telephone directory though. I guess some company will eventually make an online directory available for cell phone numbers, but will I ever see that?
Hey, some of the previous may be scary for some of you while others can hardly wait for the things listed to happen. I have a few more to share with you tomorrow that are equally disturbing. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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