::: 10 THINGS THAT WILL DISAPPEAR IN OUR LIFETIMES :::

 Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come....

 1. The Post Office

 Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. Its so deeply in financial trouble there's probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep a rural post office alive. Urban ones aren't far behind. We'll likely see the end of Saturday deliveries first, then perhaps a weekday or 2. Baby steps toward ultimate shuttering. Most of your mail every day is junk mail & bills anyway.

 2. The Cheque/Check

 Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checkss. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. 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 will 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 newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They've met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model

 for paid subscription services. Its just a matter of time.

 4. The Book

 You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. They said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. "People want a hard copy CD!" Those people quickly changed their minds when they discovered they I could get albums for half the price & never leave home to get the latest music. 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 forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book. Bookstores are already going the way of the doodoo bird.

 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 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. I know plenty of people who have nothing but cell phones in their households already.

 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 music purchased today is "catalogue 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 & 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. People will 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. Joined Handwriting

 Schools everywhere are contemplating no longer teaching cursive. Its already gone in some schools who no longer teach "joined handwriting" because nearly everything is done now on computers or keyboards of some type (pun not intended).

 10. 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.. "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

 All we will have left that can't be changed are "Memories".