Buggy whips (and buggy whip manufacturers) are commonly used as a reference to something that was once common but that’s now all but extinct.
It’s not so hard to make a list of things that are either already there, or trending heavily in that direction.
-Fax machines
-Printed newspapers
-Land lines (and the busy signal)
-The US Postal Service (thanks in no small part to the doxo’s of the world).
-Shopping malls (Amazon fueled this)
-Signatures (the squiggles we draw at the grocery store and in restaurants, and the lack of frequent pen use have made our John Hancock’s unreadable – and in many cases not useful. Docusign is also a big part of this shift.
-Change (and cash).
-Repair shops (it’s often cheaper to replace something now than it is to fix it).
As individual cases, none of these should be particularly shocking, or newsworthy. What’s more interesting are the secondary and tertiary impacts of these and what that means. Change and cash are an interesting one – and something I have seen that has started to happen is that panhandlers are asking for something we don’t have – we don’t have any change let alone spare change – and even if they were wise enough to ask for a dollar, many of us aren’t even carrying one of those around on a daily basis anymore. So where’s the future of panhandling?
Writing and signatures are interesting as well. Will pen manufacturers go out of business? Will notebooks (actual paper) become a thing of the past? Will the hand written note (including the thank you note) go away even more than it has already?
The big one that will be messy but that seems inevitable is the USPS. It’s already crazy that they go to my house at least once a day for six days a week when at most I need it delivered twice a month. But what if UPS and FedEx took over the whole thing as doxo gains momentum? No more mailboxes? No more stamps?
Shopping malls are pretty clearly in the crosshairs. We saw a terror group threaten US malls recently, and I couldn’t help but wonder why people even go to malls anymore at all? Sure you need to try some things on and window shopping can be a way to kill time – but with things like same day order/delivery – which suggests people are busier than ever – is the notion of killing time dying as well? Bowling alleys were the first to go – real estate costs in high density areas got to be too much. Amazon and expensive real estate are why malls are the next thing to go.
I am not saying I have all of these things figured out – I just think it’s an interesting spin on predicting what’s next.
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