Going about my weekend routine, I was thinking how
my son and I made a spur of the moment decision recently to look at a video
rental store that was going out of business.
It wasn’t that long ago that we also went to a Borders bookstore that
was a similar casualty of new technology.
For both my son and I, we probably sensed a loss from the removal
of the shared tactile experience and potential discovery of looking at DVDs and printed books.
That prompted me to think of the whole range of experiences
that have essentially evaporated over the past few years or decades because of technological
change. It is not that I want to turn
the clock back, even if I could. But it
bears consideration how many things or experiences have been lost because of
electronic commerce, the Internet, computers, mobile phones or some combination
of each.
Many of the activities listed below have really only shifted
in the past decade. Given the pace of change, one wonders whether this
accelerates further. We can’t know for sure, but the risk seems high, baring the
unexpected or catastrophic.
So, in no particular order, a list of some of the things I
don’t expect to do anytime soon, or not nearly as often, or perhaps never again.
First, find the phased-out activity below, followed by its successor.
·
Human highway/bridge toll booth toll takers (E-Z
Pass)
·
Gas station cashier (pay at the pump)
·
Record/CD store (iTunes or streaming services
like Pandora and Spotify)
·
Photo development at retail (digital photos,
remote printing services like Snapfish or home printing)
·
Bank teller (ATMs and Direct Deposit)
·
Book store (Kindle, iPad and Amazon.com)
·
Movie theater, DVD/VHS rental (Netflix, cable, iTunes or any number of
services)
·
Buying printed newspaper or delivery (PC browser, mobile
web, tablet, apps)
Drugstore prescription pick-ups (Mail order prescription
fulfillment)
· Map purchases, travel guides or TripTiks
(GPS, online maps, web travel services)
·
Travel agent services (Electronic ticketing, airline and
hotel reservations, online travel advice)
·
U.S. Postal Service (E-mail, online stamp
ordering)
·
Faxing (Scanning documents at home, sending via
email)
Those are all I can think of for now. What have we really lost? Perhaps human interaction or shared activities. And that’s to say nothing of the displacement
of jobs from all of the above.
Now, if I could just use a website to avoid having to call and pay a
plumber.
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