A new decade is upon us, one filled with hope, promise, wonder, and things that use batteries.
As new technologies rise up and invade our world, they often kill off the old technologies that spawned them. This is called progress.
To illustrate just how far we have come in the past ten years, take for example the age-old image of a bully kicking sand in the face of a 100-pound weakling.
Today, rather than eat a mouthful of dirt, a victim can pull a phone out of his pocket, use it to take a picture of the bully in a compromising position, create a web page all the bully’s “friends” can visit, including his boss, which will then get him fired, leaving his job to be filled by a machine built and operated by the weakling.
This is called, making the world a better place.
You don’t have to like it, but you had better get used to it, because that’s how progress works. It is an unstoppable force, except maybe in Africa and parts of Mongolia, but they’ll catch up soon enough. Count on it.
Let us review some of the death and destruction and sand in the face that new technologies have created since 2000.
For starters, try and find a record store. Ten years ago, people bought their music at stores, but not now. Not only is the cassette tape becoming obsolete, but so too is the almighty compact disc.
The CD is already in its death throes. Internet downloads, MP3 files, iTunes, iPods, and digital music forced the closure of countless music stores. Today, they are almost gone. With people buying or borrowing their music one song at a time, even the entire “album” concept has lost its power.
DVDs and digital media have completely replaced VHS tapes, and you probably won’t find a lot of video tape camcorders or cassette tape answering machines out there anymore either.
The digital camera has killed film too, but there is no need to worry. You can still take pictures of anyone, usually without them even realizing it, with your cell phone.
The entire telephone industry has been transformed in the last decade. Land lines and long distance charges are fading memories for most people, along with collect calls, privacy, civility and consideration of others.
And then there is all the stuff the Internet has killed, from TV guides and classifieds, to encyclopedias, road maps, phone books, and pornographic magazines that my uncle said he bought for the great interviews.
Since you still can’t use a computer to start a wood stove, swat flies or line a bird cage, there’s a chance newspapers will escape the cutting blade of progress and stick around for many years to come. So, keep on reading. It’s going to be an interesting decade.