Coming changes in our lives

Editor’s note: This was sent by a friend. I don’t know its origination, but it provides food for thought.

Coming changes in our Lives

Most of it is good, some of what's going on is scary.

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.  Plans are already in the works with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to expand the Wall street News model for paid subscription  services.

4. The Book.  The IPad and similar devices are in response to your comments that 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 like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates simply self-destruction. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalogue items," meaning traditional music  that the public is familiar with ie. 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, in fact using Apple TV Netflix has unlimited movies for $8.00 a month. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I 's almost good riddance and about time for the cable companies like Cox and Warner Cable to be put out of business and 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 gone forever. 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. We have reached a point in our history where supposedly private companies like Face Book are able to have people voluntarily provide unlimited amounts of private and detailed information about their lives making the job of foreign governments, local and Federal Police agencies easy access to obtain information on people all over the world. Mark Zukerberg and the people at Face book have the full backing of the NSA and other Federal Agencies like the FBI and CIA , Facebook and other similar sites have given US and Global police unlimited agencies access to more information about people that only countries like Russia and China had in the past.  The privacy Genie is out of the box and we will never get it back in again.  All we will have that can't be changed are our memories and that soon will change.