hia is very important and you are going to have to live with it....read
so you know Joe
COMING CHANGES IN OUR LIVES
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 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.
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 like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the
problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates simply
self-destruction. 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. 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. And "They" will try to get you to buy
something else. Again and again. All we will have that can't be
changed are Memories.
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT..... MOST OF THESE THINGS ARE ALREADY TAKING
PLACE AND THE OUTCOME IS SET IN STONE .
That was informative and seemed pretty reasonable as predictions go. I've
often thought the 'privacy' thing was overblown. There's a reason they call
them 'public' places where they put the cameras. Get it? Public!
Growing up in a small town of 5,000 people, I had much less 'privacy' than I
have now. If people choose to list their latest obsessions or traumas on
Facebook, what do they expect?
As for targeted advertising, as long as it's not intrusive and it helps pay
for the service (Gmail, for example) I don't mind. Amazon's recommendations
based on past purchases or 'other people who bought this also bought' are
generally helpful.
If most stuff from the post office is bills and ads then they ought to
increase those postage costs to businesses and let that subsidize our
occasional postcards and handwritten letters. However socially liberal my
ideas might be, I'm enough of a believer in good old capitalism to believe
that if you're too slow or dumb to change with the times to keep your
business profitable, then you don't deserve to exist. You can't continue to
maintain products and services which people no longer need or want. I'm an
English teacher and if tomorrow everybody decided to learn Chinese, nobody
is going to bail me out. Maybe I'm just not 'too big to fail'.
End of rant but thanks again for the forwarded information.
Craig
the death of the book is greatly exaggerated.
for instance the hulking big book of art reproductions will never be
replaced by a kindle
and is in fact an art form unto itself.
MP3's have not killed vinyl yet even.
as one site i visit so wittily put it you can roll a joint on an MP3!
the newspaper will prolly die.
and i fear the disappearance of checks. if everything clears instantly my
life is over!
there will always be those who venerate/fetishize dead media.
i have a friend who has a perfectly maintained 8-track player, even.
--
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