Some of this sounds OK but some I do not want to see happen at all, especially cloud computing

   

hia is very important and you are going to have to live with it....read  so you know  Joe 

  COMING CHANGES IN OUR LIVES 
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. 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 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 "catalog 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.  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. 

 SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT..... MOST OF THESE THINGS ARE ALREADY TAKING PLACE AND THE OUTCOME IS SET IN STONE .

That was informative and seemed pretty reasonable as predictions go. I've 
often thought the 'privacy' thing was overblown. There's a reason they call 
them 'public' places where they put the cameras. Get it? Public! 

Growing up in a small town of 5,000 people, I had much less 'privacy' than I 
have now.  If people choose to list their latest obsessions or traumas on 
Facebook, what do they expect? 

As for targeted advertising, as long as it's not intrusive and it helps pay 
for the service (Gmail, for example) I don't mind. Amazon's recommendations 
based on past purchases or 'other people who bought this also bought' are 
generally helpful. 

If most stuff from the post office is bills and ads then they ought to 
increase those postage costs to businesses and let that subsidize our 
occasional postcards and handwritten letters. However socially liberal my 
ideas might be, I'm enough of a believer in good old capitalism to believe 
that if you're too slow or dumb to change with the times to keep your 
business profitable, then you don't  deserve to exist. You can't continue to 
maintain products and services which people no longer need or want. I'm an 
English teacher and if tomorrow everybody decided to learn Chinese, nobody 
is going to bail me out. Maybe I'm just not 'too big to fail'. 

End of rant but thanks again for the forwarded information. 

Craig

the death of the book is greatly exaggerated. 
for instance the hulking big book of art reproductions will never be 
replaced by a kindle 
and is in fact an art form unto itself. 
MP3's have not killed vinyl yet even. 
as one site i visit so wittily put it you can roll a joint on an MP3! 
the newspaper will prolly die. 
and i fear the disappearance of checks. if everything clears instantly my 
life is over! 

there will always be those who venerate/fetishize dead media. 
i have a friend who has a perfectly maintained 8-track player, even.