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Bye - - Bye - - -
Things are going to be changing - -
From Dan Harless
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’re 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 simply self-destruction. Over 40% of
the music purchased today is “catalog items,” meaning traditional music
that the public is familiar with. The 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!
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