Dakinetalks favorite Uncle (Chester Lau)
talks about many things we now know will soon be no more.
"Unc" is a retired cinematographer currently living
on the Hawai'ian Island of Oahu & giving the politicians a bad time...
Ten Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime
More scary than humorous!
Ten Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime This is USA oriented, but Canada & the rest will not be far behind..
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 Cheque
Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with cheque by 2018. It costs the financial system billions
of dollars a year to process cheques. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the
cheque. 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 "catalogue 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. Joined Handwriting
Already gone in some schools who no longer teach "joined handwriting" because nearly everything is done now on
computers or keyboards of some type (pun not intended)
10. 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. "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.
All we will have left that can't be changed are "Memories".
Hana Hou, (Encore) Shared From Youtube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsM8D31Wfg0
Phallic Traffic Barriers Offend Some Scott Township, Penn., Residents But Town Unlikely To Remove The Concrete Posts
Maybe the residents of Scott Township, Penn., should look on the place as a tourist attarction.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/phallic-traffic-barriers-offend-some-scott-township-penn-residents-town-unlikely-remove?
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