Nine Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime.......

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 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 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 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 "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.