I received an email recently postulating that there will be ten things that will disappear in our lifetime. The document seems to have originated in the US, but as you would expect, it is just as applicable here.
First to go they reckon is the Post office. Well it’s almost disappeared already in our town.
A “Temporarily Closed” sign on the posting slots in Lincoln Road has been there for months and the government have agreed to a three day delivery service as opposed to the six day service we are currently receiving.
Shouldn’t be too much of a problem; most items that now come in the letter box are either bills, begging letters or junk mail.
The second item listed is the cheque. Plastic cards and online transactions supersede the necessity to write a cheque. Receiving online accounts and paying them by direct credit is just hastening the demise of the cheque – and the post office.
If you are reading this via a conventional hand-held periodical you will be disturbed to know that third on the list is the newspaper which will go the way of the milkman says the writer. You will be able to read the newspaper online, but you have to be ready to pay for it.
Fourth item is the book. Although I personally enjoy the physical book you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages you can now browse a bookstore online and even preview a chapter before you buy. I love conventional bookstores, but I guess the eventual departure of the genial bookseller is inevitable.
Number five is the landline telephone. Most people are keeping their landline just because they’ve always had it. Even primary school kids have got cell phones.
Next up – number six – is music. This is the saddest part of the change story. The writer reckons the music industry is dying a slow death because of the lack of innovative new music. Can you imagine anyone walking around in some future time whistling Royals?
Apparently over forty per cent of music purchased today is “catalogue items” meaning traditional music the public is familiar with; older established artists. This is also true of the live concert circuit and here I am thinking of the sell-out concerts of Neil Diamond the Rolling Stones or Cliff Richard.
Television is number seven. Revenues of the networks are down dramatically. 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 previously spent watching TV.
Number eight is surprisingly “Things you own.” Here the author claims that your photographs, music, movies and documents are now being stored in a “cloud” that is either under the control of Apple, Microsoft or Google. So do you actually own this stuff or will it be able to disappear at any moment in a big “poof?”
Makes you want to run to your cupboard and pull out a photo album, grab a book from the bookshelf or open up a CD case and pull out a recording.
In ninth place is joined handwriting. Already gone in some schools who no longer teach joined handwriting because nearly everything is done now on computers or iPad
Last but not least at number ten is privacy.
Actually it’s already gone. There are cameras on the streets, in most buildings and even built into your computer and your smart phone.
“They” know where you are right down to the GPS co-ordinates and the Google Street View. The TV show Person of Interest may not be as far-fetched as you might think.
When you buy something your buying pattern is circulated a million times and “they” will use this information to try to get you to buy something else, again and again.
On the privacy issue the author concludes that all we will be left with and can’t be changed are our “memories.”
Lack of privacy has never worried me; after all I’m a law-abiding citizen, I’ve got nothing to hide. But that’s fine if you’ve got a democratically elected government you can trust. But under our dopey MMP system of governance, which is patently undemocratic, anything could happen. Imagine the tyrannical potential if ex-Australian communist party member Russell Norman or ex-German fraudster Kim Dotcom were to rise to power.
So number eleven on my wish list would be the demise of MMP.
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