The original appears to have been posted on March 11, 2011 by Charles Scott Kimball, aka: the “xenohistorian”, on his website at: http://xenohistorian.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/9-things-that-will-disappear-in-our-lifetime/.
If you are like me, it will probably make you stop and think about both the amount and the pace of change that is occurring in the world in which we live. I re-post it here for your consideration. Mr. Kimball writes:
NINE THINGS THAT WILL DISAPPEAR IN OUR LIFETIME
I have talked before about how society is changing faster than ever, to the point that we can no longer expect one generation’s lifestyle to be much like those before and after it. For example, I remember the time when I told my daughter what television used to be like: we had a black and white TV, which only had three channels if you didn’t count the occasional UHF station. Cartoons were mostly confined to Saturday morning, and because we didn’t have remotes, we had to walk all the way across the room to change the channel. Alas, my daughter didn’t have much sympathy for my plight.
Anyway, in previous messages (May 28, 2009, December 15, 2009, and January 7, 2011), I posted lists of things that are disappearing fast, and will probably be gone in our lifetime. Now here’s a fourth list, which I’m sharing because most of the items did not appear on the others. Unfortunately I couldn’t find out who wrote it; if you’re like me, you will find some of these disappearances disturbing.
9 Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime…
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. e-mail, 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 fromiTunes. 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 because innovative new music isn’t 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 has heard for years, from 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.”
(Unquote: No wonder my home town doesn’t have a top 40 station. However, the University of Kentucky has two radio stations playing artists you don’t hear elsewhere, and that gives me a spark of hope. And some new artists are turning to nontraditional sources to get their music out, like YouTube. Did you hear how the band Journey picked up a new member that way, out of a slum in the Philippines?)
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. “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.
This piece has circulated fairly widely on the internet and by e-mail. It has sparked considerable discussion over the unfolding future. For my parts, I do not know all tomorrow holds. Nor do I know how comfortable I will be living in that brave new world. But I do know Who holds tomorrow.
And I am confident that, as long as He delays His coming, the world will go on, and it will continue to change. As long as it does, the church must ever find ways to adapt her techniques for reaching people. In short, our METHODS must always change because the world always changes. What stays the same, however, is the MESSAGE. It does not and must not change.
As Paul said in I Corinthians 9:22-23: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” We hold fast to our message: the gospel. We readily adapt and change our methods: all things to all men. And we must be willing to do this for one reason above all others: that some may be saved!