7 Things That Will Soon Disappear Forever
Ten years ago, thousands of Blockbuster Video stores occupied buildings all over the ｃountry, renting DVDs and selling popcorn. Today, they’re virtually all gone. The company’s shares once traded for nearly $30. Now Blockbuster is a penny stock.
Obsolescence isn’t always so quick or so complete, but emerging technologies and changing practices are sounding the death knell for other familiar items.
The Plow
Few things are as symbolic of farming as the moldboard plow, but the truth is, the practice of “turning the soil” is dying off.
Modern farmers have little use for it. It provides a deep tillage that turns up too much soil, encouraging erosion because the plow leaves no plant material on the surface to stop wind and rain water from carrying the soil away. It also requires a huge amount of diesel fuel to plow, compared with other tillage methods, cutting into farmers' profits. The final straw: It releases more carbon dioxide into the air than other tillage methods.
The plow is winding down its days on small, poor farms that can't afford new machinery. Most U.S. cropland is now managed as "no-till" or minimum-till, relying on herbicides and implements such as seed drills that work the ground with very little disturbance, among other practices.
College Textbooks
By the end of this decade, digital formats for tablets and e-readers will displace physical books for assigned reading on college campuses, The Kiplinger Letter is forecasting. K schools won’t be far behind, though they’ll mostly stick with larger computers as their platform of choice.
Digital texts figure to yield more bang for the buck than today’s textbooks. Interactive software will test younger pupils’ mastery of basic skills such as arithmetic and create customized lesson plans based on their responses. Older students will be able to take digital notes and even simulate chemistry experiments when bricks-and-mortar labs aren’t handy.
This is a mixed bag for publishers. They’ll sell more digital licenses of semester- or yearlong usage of electronic textbooks as their customers can’t turn to the used-book marketplace anymore. On the other hand, schools will seek free online, open-source databases of information and collaborate with other institutions and districts to develop their own content on digital models, cutting out traditional educational publishers.
The Clutch Pedal
Every year it seems that an additional car model loses the manual transmission option. Even the Ford F-150 pickup truck can’t be purchased with a stick anymore.
The decline of the manual transmission (in the U.S.) has been decades in the making, but two factors are, ahem, accelerating its demise:
Number one: Automatics are getting more efficient, with up to nine gear ratios, allowing engines to run at the lowest, most economical speeds. Many Mazdas and some BMWs, among others, now score better fuel mileage with an automatic than with a stick.
Number two: Among high-performance cars, such as Porsches, “automated” manual shifts are taking hold. They do away with the clutch pedal and use electronics to control shifting instead. The result: Shifting is faster than even for the most talented clutch-and-stick jockey. Plus, the costs on these are coming down, and they can be found in less-expensive sporty cars, such as the Golf GTI.
Even the biggest of highway trucks are abandoning the clutch and stick for automatics, for fuel-efficiency gains and to attract more drivers who won’t need to learn how to grind the gears.
A small segment of enthusiast cars, such as the Ford Mustang, as well as a few price-leader economy models, such as the Nissan Versa and Ford Fiesta, will continue to offer the traditional three-pedal arrangement for some years to come. “It will be reserved for the ‘driver’s vehicle,’” says Ivan Drury, an analyst for Edmunds.com. But dealers will stock only a handful of the cars, and some will need to be special-ordered.
Your Neighborhood Mail Collection Box
First-class mail volume is plummeting, down 55% from 2004 to 2013. So, around the ｃountry, the U.S. Postal Service has been cutting back on those iconic blue collection boxes. The number has fallen by more than half since the mid 1980s. Since it costs time and fuel for mail carriers to stop by each one, the USPS monitors usage and pulls out boxes that don't see enough traffic.
Some boxes will find new homes in places with greater foot traffic, such as shopping centers, public transit stops and grocery stores. But on a quiet corner at the end of your street? Say goodbye.
The Incandescent Lightbulb
No, government energy cops are not going to come yank the lightbulbs out of your fixtures, as some firebrand politicians foment. But the traditional incandescent lightbulb that traces its roots back to Thomas Edison is definitely on its way out. As of January 1, 2014, the manufacture and importation of 40- to 100-watt incandescent bulbs became illegal in the U.S., part of a much broader effort to get Americans to use less electricity.
Stores can still sell whatever inventory they have left, but once the hoarders have had their run, that’s it. And with incandescent bulbs burning for only about 1,000 hours each, eventually they’ll flicker out.
The lighting industry has moved forward with compact fluorescents, LEDs, halogen bulbs and other technologies.
Soon, the only places you'll still see the telltale glow of a tungsten filament in a glass vacuum will be in three-way bulbs (such as the 50/100/150 watt), heavy-duty and appliance bulbs, and some decorative bulbs.
Your Privacy
If you are online, you better assume that you already have no privacy and act accordingly. Every mouse click and keystroke is tracked, logged and potentially analyzed and eventually used by Web site product managers, marketers, hackers and others. To use most services, users have to opt-in to lengthy terms and conditions that allow their data to be crunched by all sorts of actors.
The list of tracking devices is set to boom, as sensors are added to appliances, lights, locks, HVAC systems and even trash cans. Other innovations: Using Wi-Fi signals, for instance, to track movements, from where you're driving or walking down to your heartbeat. Retailers will use the technology to track in minute detail how folks walk around a store and reach for products. Also, facial-recognition software that can change display advertising to personalize it to you (time for a mask?). Transcription software will be so good that many businesses will soon collect mountains of phone-conversation data to mine and analyze.
And think of this: Most of us already carry around an always-on tracking device for which we usually pay good money—a smart phone. Your phone is loaded up with sensors and GPS data, and will soon collect lots of health data, too.
One reason not to fret: Encryption methods are getting better at walling off at least some aspects of our digital lives. But living the reclusive life of J.D. Salinger might soon become real fiction.
Dial-Up Internet
If you want to hear the once-familiar beeps and whirs of a computer going online through a modem, you will soon need to do that either in a museum or in some very, very remote location.
According to a study from the Pew Foundation, only 3% of U.S. households went online via a dial-up connection in 2013. Thirteen years before that, only 3% had broadband (Today, 70% have home broadband). Massive federal spending on broadband initiatives, passed during the last recession to encourage economic recovery, has helped considerably.
Some providers will continue to offer dial-up as an afterthought for those who can’t or don’t want to connect via cable or another broadband means. But a number of the bigger internet service providers, such as Verizon Online, have quit signing up new dial-up subscribers altogether.
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VOCABULARY WORDS:
1. Death knell (n.) ~ the tolling of a bell to mark someone's death
2. Bang for the buck (idiom) ~ the worth of one's money or exertion
3. Demise (v.) ~ the end of existence or activity termination
4. Foment (v.) ~ instigate or stir up (an undesirable or violent sentiment or course of action)
5. Flicker out (idiom) ~ die away and go out after a series of flickers
6. Fret (v.) ~ be constantly or visibly worried or anxious
7. Wall off (idiom) ~ to separate or segregate someone or something by building a wall
8. Reclusive (adj.) ~ avoiding the company of other people solitary
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. How do you feel about the disappearance of the abovementioned items? Which disappearance do you think will cause the most impact in our everyday life?
2. Do you remember something from your childhood which has disappeared in the recent years? What is it?
3. Which recent invention do you wish would disappear? Discuss your answer.
