Today I'm linking to a pdf of the article on which I want to comment because the originating site has a whole lot of 
content that I'd rather not point out to you folks.I commented a while back to one of my regular readers that something was an e-ticket ride and mused afterward that the phrase is one that I'm guessing very few - if any of my students - would every know. I've never been to a Disney theme park - the originator of the e-ticket ride - but I certainly had heard the phrase enough times to use it here and there in conversation. Soon, however, such a thing will pass from our lexicon, and I'm guessing that it'll happen quite quickly.
Today's article is titled "10 things your great grandchildren won't remember", and I think they're being awfully charitable in not saying "your grandkids", because lots of these things will be gone within the next decade or sotwoand I'm guessing that it won't take three generations for them to total artifacts.
Take, for example, the record store (mentioned alongside the video rental store). I love the record store. I miss going to Everybody's Records or Ear-X-Tacy every month or so to check out what the new music is. I wouldn't always buy something, but I knew that the only way I could find the new music was by wandering into the store, by checking with the guys behind the counter, the girls who knew the bands that were new.
But those days are long, long passed.
Today I heard a song on the radio, caught a line or two that grabbed my attention, went home, googled the lyrics, hopped in iTunes, and owned the song without ever speaking to single person, without ever getting out my wallet opening a single door.
Even the people at the record stores have been bypassed in favor of Amazon's recommendations, iTunes' genius feature, and blogs of top ten lists.
The world is - as it has always been - changing, and none of us want to be caught making the best buggy whips around.
Oh, and the title is because I'm out for a three-days weekend starting tomorrow. I'll try to have something ready for Monday, but no promises, folks.
Just a heads up that the annual plea for donations to Pasta for Pennies is coming this week.
4 comments:
That's one freakishly positive list, but I will very much miss record stores (ironically, my laptop is perched on top of a box full of records).
I agree with most of them: printed papers, desk tops, white male dominance, land lines, HIV, and cursive. I do think people will still use their hands to write, but cursive is unnecessary.
As far as record/video stores go, to my knowledge, Everybody's still lives, Shake-It lives, and Mole's lives. I think these places will live, but Best Buys will die. The specialty shops have a niche market that people love, as you mentioned.
Getting lost will continue. Those GPS units are pretty good but not impeccable and they promote a ridiculous amount of not really understanding your surroundings. I feel like I'm probably wrong, but I will hold out on this one, perhaps just out my own distaste for GPS units and the idiocy they inspire.
Wireless electricity is an interesting one. It's necessarily inefficient, but I can see its use at short range. It will be interesting to see if large scale power distribution ever happens. Efficiency will become increasingly important as we move away from fossil fuels.
I was at Ear X Tacy last night. By far my favorite record store.
Mr Echt - it's so hard to ever predict the way that the future will go that any endeavor like this is destined to reflect more on the writer's sense of either optimism or pessimism than on anything really likely to happen.
Nathan - cursive is stupid...CoachSullivan will attest to that... Everybody's and the rest of the record stores will have to evolve, because I'm betting that the purchasing of physical music is probably no more than twenty years away from absolute death...those stores might migrate online...dunno...
GPS units are an interesting case because so much of what they do is exactly what you wrote - divorce us from our surroundings and instead make us reliant on the idiot box telling us to turn left...the technology there will get better, but the problem stll has to exist...
wireless electricity really intrigues me, especially in the format of the power mats on which you can lay your electronics and get them charged up...I want one of those in my kitchen drawer so I can get rid of all the cords to recharge a dozen different devices...
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