Doom and Gloom and Progress

Things to Fear in the Future

Below is yet another email of doom and gloom which I have reproduced unedited. Nine Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetimes 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 the long term. Email, Fastway, 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 cheques 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 deliveries from the milkman, butcher, baker and fruit and veg 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. Many said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes because they wanted hard copy CDs. When they discovered they get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music they changed their minds. 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. Just 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. Many 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. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. People will 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 cupboard 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. "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".

Peter’s Comment

Do we really need to be so afraid of the future?

Let’s turn the clock back a little and we’ll see that people have always been sceptical of the future.

It started when it was rumoured that a person called an inventor was working on the development of a new device that would one day be used by almost everyone throughout the world. The device, it was said, would dominate our lives. It would be known as the wheel. People feared the arrival of the wheel.

Fast forward a few centuries. Oops. Fast forward belongs to the 1970s. I want to look at the 1870s. It was rumoured in the 1870s that in the future, wheels, instead of being drawn by horses, would be propelled by a new device that would come to dominate peoples’ lives, the internal combustion engine. People feared the arrival of the engine.

About the same time it was rumoured that in the future man would be able to fly through the air on artificial wings. Man would also be able to talk to his neighbours through a wire mounted on poles, have his stomach opened for surgery without dying from infection and write letters on a writing machine while receiving light from a special globe burning invisible energy. All of these things were feared more than war, plague or poverty.

It was also rumoured that the time was fast approaching when too many people would be literate thereby leaving a shortage of servants for the wealthy. And where would the world be if slavery were abolished?

Then people feared the arrival of ships that would carry 500 people, jet-propelled flying machines that would move faster even than the speed of sound and pocket-size machines that could that could calculate mathematics. All of these things, it was feared, would lead to the destruction of moral and orderly society.

Then people feared what was termed the ‘cashless society’ in which people would no longer carry pockets full of coins and rolls of banknotes but instead would carry a piece of plastic card.

People have always resisted change. Plans for ghastly new buildings always attracted the most vehement protests; the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Westminster Abbey, Auckland Skytower…

But, wait a minute! Is it not the abovementioned progress that raised man from his cave existence?

Man has always benefitted from progress.

Man will always benefit from progress.