starting over... interesting comments...
some additional observations...
post office... I ordered something from Land's End the other day. It came UPS AND USPS (post office). You see, it came UPS all the way to my town, then they delivered it to the post office, and they put it in my PO Box (UPS pays USPS for that last connection). FedEx and the post office have a partnership of sorts. You see FedEx boxes outside of lots of post offices now, unheard of before. The "junk mail" is what pays for the little first class mail that we receive. I still get a lot of my bills through the mail, but so many people now get their statements emailed in a PDF or a link online. How many actual letters do you send now? I remember having pen pals in my late teens and early 20s. Now it is all facebook and email and instant messaging. No more trunks full of bundled romantic correspondence to look at decades later. I can see the post office going to 5 day a week service. Already I receive nothing on Tuesdays except the weekly junk bundle of ads.
checks ... I used to work in check processing for the US Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It was a large operation. They were just starting to heavily market the ACH (automated clearing house) concept. Sending images of the front and back of the checks and the information on the MICR line at the bottom electronically. They were still sending checks cross country on overnight flights. I quit after a few years, but I heard not long ago that they consolidated all of the check processing for the branches for St. Louis (Louisville, Memphis, Little Rock) to St. Louis and that it is a fraction of the size.
paper money .. you did not mention this one, but I can see the replacement of $1 bills with coins coming soon... along with the elimination of pennies. Not cost effective.
newspaper... I only get the Sunday paper, and that only for the coupons and ads. And more and more of those coupons are showing up online. The ads are also showing up on the respective retailers sites, sometimes a week early. I can see this going strictly online or to e-book readers.
books (and magazines) ... ironically, magazines are actually doing well from stats I read recently (but cannot put my finger on right now). But every ad and even some articles, have little scan codes and/or web addresses for more content. I would hate to see books go away. I love having hardback books on my shelf. And electronic versions can be altered at the whim of the content provider.... or as Amazon did recently, just erase it from your Kindle without your permission. The only thing I would like to see go electronic is college and elementary school textbooks.
POTS (plain old telephone service... aka "landline"). For cost reasons, I just recently switched my phone number from AT&T POTS to AT&T u-Verse (VOIP) service. In reality, I only kept it to keep my old number, the one I have had for 15 years and the one my parents had forever before that. Once we move out of the area, I will probably just go to straight unlimited cell service.
music I still have some cassettes, but nothing to play them on. I still like having a CD, but only so I can make a backup copy and play the MP3 version on my player. I do not like the idea of buying an MP3 and then not having a hard copy.
television .... the cable internet providers are figuring this one out (story here). If you are a heavy streamer, and based on caps that Charter and AT&T are going to put on their internet service, they are going to start charging for those extra gigs or slow down or cut the connection if it exceeds those caps. And to think that at one time it was thought that the fiber cable systems had been overbuilt with so much excess capacity... now that technology has caught up, they can't build fiber fast enough.
things... we have too many damn things. I have a stack of stuff I am taking to the local charity (5a's thrift store... a store that benefits a local pet shelter). I have a rule... bring one thing in the house, send two things out... keeps clutter to a minimum.
privacy .... we have never had privacy ... before the internet and computers.... it was nosy neighbors. Even if you went completely cash (income and expense), their are cameras everywhere now.
The world will continue to spin. In reality, if computers and the internet and television went away, I would not cry. Some things are made easier with computers, but so many other things about them are time wasters....
Speaking of which, I need to get on the phone and call some of my offices to make appointments for my job. Have to pay for the internet, television, phones, etc.
Snakes (Rich )
(as a side note, why is it more and more postal carriers look like slobs.... if they even wear a uniform, they have their shirts untucked. My grandpa is probably rolling over in his grave on that one.)
