Left in the dust

A century ago, railroads were the dominant US industry, the playground for the monopoly moguls of the late 19th century, the J.J. Hills & J.P Morgans of the world. But today, when you think of corporate behemoths, you would probably think Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg,  Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet & perhaps the Koch brothers. Computers, social media, investment companies. What happened to Great Northern, Union Pacific, Atchison - Topeka & the Santa Fe? Of course there are many reasons for businesses to decline and fail. New technology supersedes the old. You can't sell buggy whips in an automobile age or film in a digital camera age.

I believe many businesses, railroads among them, failed to prosper due to a lack of vision and an unwillingness to evolve - a denial of a changing world. In the case of railroads, had they defined themselves as "railroads" rather than "transportation companies", or even "land development companies", history might be different. Railroads did not decline because the a need for passenger and freight transportation disappeared. With bolder vision, you might be flying "Great Northern Airlines" or receiving your Amazon delivery from B&O Packaging Service (BOPS) instead of UPS. (Southern Pacific seems to have been more prescient - it evolved into Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications - SPRINT).

There are numerous examples companies that died on the vine by single-minded focus on their product rather than the benefit they can bring to their customers. Typewriters rather than "word processing", buggy whips rather than "motivational devices", CDs rather than "music industry", newspapers rather than "information delivery", film rather than "images". Who's the next buggy whip company?  

Through my hazy crystal ball, here are 16 predictions for things that will become obsolete in your lifetime.

1. Checkout clerks & bank tellers. ATM-like machines will become more and more sophisticated. "Amazon Go" allows you to grocery shop and then "just walk out".  Tap your phone on entry and your purchases are logged and your Amazon account is charged.
2. The Post Office. You know it in your heart every time you walk to the mailbox. Most of your mail is junk and bills.
3. Your checkbook. "Plastic" or more to the point, Paypal & Apple Pay.
4. The delivered newspaper. Sad but true. No one but us old guys gets news there.
5. Telephone land lines. Nearly dead. You don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it.
6. Printed books. You say you will never give up the book that you hold in your hand and turn real pages. That is me and I represent the last vestiges of that antiquated thought. Actually, the book itself may be endangered. Seems no one under 50 reads books any more.
7. Owning your own car. Car sharing, on-demand rental e.g. Uber, ZipCar is the future.
8. Hospital Orderly. Think "medical robotics".  But - nurses will never be replaced by robots. Nurses are "unautomatable."
9. Long-haul truck drivers. Self driving vehicles and drone delivery portend their demise.
10. Radiologists. AI computers already read x-rays & MRI's better than humans
11. Assembly line jobs. The worker-less factory is in sight and in fact, any repetitive task job is doomed. Robots. 
12. Law clerks, stock brokers and any job that involves discovering information from printed or online material. The "Big Data" era is upon us. 
13. Movie theaters & Network TV. You are already abandoning this for streamed content.
14. Armies. Well, maybe not. Governments always seem to manage to engage in warfare. But cyber warfare, robotic machine gunners and drone attacks will change the way wars are fought.
15. Human friends. Welcome the "Personal Assistant Robot". Amazon's Alexa & "Hey, Google" are just the first incarnation. Envision this, "Hey, friend. You've been watching TV for 6 hours now.  How about taking a walk?". "Hey, friend. You've gone through a half a dozen ice cream tubs since your last vegetable." Couple this with your Facebook friends, you may never have to interact face-to-face with a real person again.
16. Privacy. Look back with nostalgia. It's gone. It's been gone for a long time. Most recently Congress approved giving internet providers the ability to sell your browsing history. A recent article in Wired described "How to Stop Your Smart TV from Spying on You". There are cameras on the street, in most buildings, in your computer and cell phone. Buy something, and your online ads seemingly instantaneously change to reflect that purchase, trying to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

And the disappearing department store is of course a foregone conclusion.

All we will have left are our memories.....  barring Alzheimer's.

BTW,  I've got a Walkman for sale.

Copyright © 2017 Dave Hoplin