The Year We Make Contact

I was reading an article on Yahoo with a list of things that won't last 2010. Among the obvious are "Gas-Guzzling Cars" and "Newspaper Subscriptions," and "Home Telephone Services." It was only a matter of time before they got to CDs, another sadly obvious choice.

More interesting choices include DVDs. They hypothesize that with renting DVDs online so cheap, that people may stop buying DVDs all together. I find this a little unlikely seeing as people are a possessive bunch, and even with music, while no one except me apparently buys CDs anymore, they still buy and own music. (I don't know why no one's ever tried renting music.)

Another interesting item was "New College Textbooks." I know it's been years since I've been in college, but I'm sure we could save money by buying used textbooks even back then. Though nowadays, I guess you can rent textbooks or even download them, but then you wouldn't have a $90 paperweight now would you?

I wasn't even sure that "External Hard Drives" were such a big market to end up on list on this. I don't necessarily see the wisdom in uploading your files to a server far, far away that could, hypothetically, break down at any time.

So, in review, I own DVDs, CDs, a landline, an external hard drive, no smartphone, a newspaper subscription, and some old textbooks even my college didn't want back. (While my car isn't a gas-guzzler, it's also not one of those fancy hybrids.) Looks like my days are numbered.

you can read the original article here.