Fw: Coming Changes

BE SURE TO READ THE LAST SENTENCE:

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 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 all 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.

7 comments:

bendk said...

WAAAAAAAAH I'M OLD AND EVERYTHING'S CHANGING. MY PARENTS SURELY NEVER SAID THE SAME THING FOR MY GENERATION

*pisses, shits self*

Also, awesome of them to bring up the Post Office has to make money shit. Morons.

Anonymous said...

Some of these things are probably true, at least in the long term. Howvever, I have object to a few of them. The Post Office isn't going anywhere, at least not for a while. As much as people like to bitch about it, its actually on pretty good financial ground.

Television isn't going away. There's more variety now then ever, mostly because every channel is now cranking out its own shows. True, this variety means there's a lot of crap, but there's also enough good stuff too.

As for music going away? Doubtful. Its a huge part of human existence, and it will continue to be. It may not exist in the same form we know it now, but its days are not numbered.

ferschitz said...

Yeesh, what a bunch whiny victimizers these folks are.

Meh: whatever... so stuff is changing. What's else new?

Anonymous said...

The grocery store's a SUPERmart, uh-huh
Electrically they keep a baseball score!

And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on...


Anyone who complains about FedEx wiping out the Post Office hasn't tried to send a letter cross-country for $0.40.

Marc with a C said...

This e-mail is just an updated version of people writing letters to Dear Constance whining about how the horse and buggy are declining and will lead to the extinction of horses, or how the use of the railroad will make all those canals and steamships obsolete.

Kinda sad, really.

Anonymous said...

To be honest, I don't know that there is anything particuarly "right wing" about this.

It's more just an over-blown set of "predictions" about how technology will change media and communication, and affect privacy and marketing. Some of it's probably true, some it's probably wrong, and a lot of it sounds a bit hyperbolic.

But I don't see the political right's hand in this. Sounds to me more like grumpy luddites of no particular political persuasion, getting worried and worked up over technological change.

Hooray4US said...

I agree with the last Anon post that this is mostly grumpy luddites complaining about how technology is changing stuff. But it tends to be the same grumpy, ill informed luddites who then complain that the atomic symbol used in the nuclear summit is somehow secret code for Islam taking over the world or something (see one of the next posts). So, although there's not a particularly rightwing agenda in this one, it's kinda sorta part of that continuum... ill informed whiners complaining about something.

 
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