Hi, this is Frank Romano from WhatTheyThink.com. Well, I found this article; it’s been around for a few months now. I think I wrote about it two months ago. But it hit me that we ought to sort of discuss it as this stage; Twenty-Five Things About to Become Extinct. I’m going to from the last one, the 25th one on to the first on. See if you can guess which ones they are. Now, some of the involve print, and some of them don’t. I’ll probably skip over some of those.
The 25th thing that will become extinct, the U.S. Post Office. No, I disagree with you. I think that the post office has to exist. We’re still going to mail, or ship physical objects. If you buy something somewhere, can we only rely on UPS? No. They don’t go everywhere. Fed Ex? They don’t go everywhere. DHL? Well, they didn’t go anywhere. The problem is that the post office – problem. The challenge is that by law, they have to go everywhere. They have to deliver to the south rim, the lower part of the Grand Canyon, whereas the other companies don’t. So, you cannot ship UPS and Fed Ex everywhere. So, what’s going to have to happen, over time is some kind of interrelationship between those three organizations. Although Fed Ex and the Post Office seem to be working together, there’s a Fed Ex box in most post offices, at least the ones I go to. So, I think you still need the postal service. You still need post offices. You still need post office boxes because even though there are companies that compete with post office boxes, they have not, in anyway done as much as the post office has done.
The 24th thing, the Yellow Pages. Yeah, I agree with that one. It’s going online. And it’s the Yellow Pages people’s own fault. They’re the dumbest group. You know, our family had a small bookstore for many, many years. There was not a single year when the cost of that Yellow Pages ad went down. Not a single year. I kept saying to the sales people, don’t you people know how to control your costs? There’s no alternative? I have to keep paying more and more money for an ad. So, then what you would do is take smaller and smaller ads or cut back in some way.
Classified ads. No. They don’t go away. They go away from newspapers, they move, however, to Craig’s List, EBay, I mean, think about it. They are classified systems as such. So, you still have them, you just have them in different ways.
Movie Rental Stores: Probably so. We’re going to download movies at some point in time, or they’re going to mail you the discs. There’s no reason for you to go into a store and get this stuff.
A Dial-up Internet Access: Darn, I like that sound that it made, you know? But you’re right, it’s too slow.
Phone Land Lines: Yeah, I saw a number of articles recently about that, that phone land lines are becoming – we all have a cell phone. Why do we even have a land line at this stage?
Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs: Well, I can’t comment on that one, I don’t eat crabs.
Eighteen, VCR’s: Yeah, we can record things through TIVO and right to a disc, so perhaps the VCR. Remember VHS? Remember beta decks?
Ash Trees: Okay, I don’t know about ash trees, but there is some kind of beetle that enjoys them. So what they ought to do is coat the tree with something the beetle doesn’t like.
Ham Radio: Well, think about it. Our cell phones, it’s the same thing. Right? That was the great thing about ham radio is that you communicate one to one. Well, we do that now automatically.
The swimming hole: I never went to a swimming hole. I went to a public swimming pool in Brooklyn New York. But I guess there are people out there who find swimming holes.
Answering Machines: Now, I don’t have an answering machine. The system that answers it is probably the phone service. The phone company takes care of it for me.
Cameras that use film: Now, that’s funny. I was just at a place, a resort area. And one of the things they left on the bed one night as a gift was an analog camera. Okay. Why didn’t you leave a digital camera? Well, they’re too expensive. However, I remember signing up for a subscription to something and it said, “Free digital camera.” And this is what I got. I think it takes one photo at a time, and then there’s a cable, and the cable is bigger than the camera to connect it to your computer and put it in. But I kind of agree; cameras that use film. Although I always – in the car, I always carry an analog camera because it can stay forever and therefore if something happens and you need to take pictures for insurance reasons, or whatever, the analog camera is always ready to go. However, digital cameras, the batteries could be dead. That’s the catch-22.
Incandescent bulbs, #12: Gone. Probably true the way we rove on those little florescent doohickeys.
#11, Stand alone bowling alleys: Well, I guess they’re not part of bigger entertainment complexes.
The milkman: All right. I remember when I was a kid we had a milkman, but we also had an ice box and an ice man, but that’s a whole different story.
#9, handwritten letters: I send out a lot of handwritten letters. I think they really make you stand out, they’re very personal. I love it. But they say they’re going to go away. I don’t think so.
Wild Horses: All right. I guess there are fewer of them then there used to be.
#7, Personal checks: I think all checks. I think over time, it’s all going to be electronic banking; it will all be electronic bill presentment and payment. So, you can see that from just Deluxe Check. Deluxe Check used to have 15 or more printing operations around the United States. Today, maybe it’s five. I don’t know. Harland, they cut down as well. The whole check business has gone down.
#6, Drive-in Theaters: I don’t think I’ve ever went to one. I know I’ve seen them.
#5, Mumps and Measles: Yeah, that’s true. With modern pharmaceuticals, that’s been abated. I remember I was watching a new show when my kids were very young and they were giving an award to Jonas Salk and so one of my kids said, “Who’s Dr. Salk?” And then I realized that they never lived through that period when Polio was such a terrible thing that we had to take all these precautions against it. And it didn’t help to a large extent. And all of us had friends, or knew someone who was hit by polio. And Dr. Salk now comes up with this vaccine and it solves the problem. And yet, young people today have no idea who he was because that disease, that terrible thing is gone.
#4, Honeybees: Evidently there is some kind of colony collapse disorder that’s affecting the honeybee. That could have an effect on agriculture, by the way.
#3, News Magazines, and TV News: All right. Now, you’re lumping them together. I’m not quite sure. Now, I understand the news magazines part, because by the time you get the magazine, it’s old news. But theoretically, what they’re giving you is more insight, more commentary, although we get a lot of that on television to begin with. I think TV news will be there. I think the internet news will usurp a piece of it, but it’s going to be some kind of delicate balance between the two.
#2, Analog TV: Yeah, we went digital TV. I remember we had to make a complete conversion. If you had any old analog TV, you had to buy this box; they gave you a $40 credit. I went to Radio Shack and I bought one, by the way. Why? I have no idea. I don’t have an analog television, but I figured some day, that little box may have some value that someone needs it for something. By the way, I have all this crap in the warehouse if you want come and see it.
#1 the number one thing that will go out of – that will become extinct. The family farm. That’s true. Most farms are getting bigger; they’re conglomerates under corporate leadership of various kinds. They get giant subsidies. Of course, we import a lot of our vegetables and fruits nowadays. I go to the supermarket down the street and there are oranges from Chile, and stuff from Guatemala. So, with modern transportation you can get this stuff from almost anywhere in the world. But it does affect the family farm.
So, we looked then at all the things on there that involve print. We come down to Yellow Pages, classified ads to some extent, handwritten letters, if you will, that’s stationery, personal checks, news magazines. So, a handful of the things on these lists involve print. And then of course, the entire spectrum of our society.
So, those are the things that they say will be extinct and my comment and of course that’s my opinion. Take care.
Because television is becoming inane; I don’t need anymore reality shows, I am a reality show.
