Here are 15 services that we’ve used during our lifetime that are slowing disappearing (hat tip to Joe Knecht):
- U.S. Post Office – They are pricing themselves out of existence. With e-mail, and and on-line services they are a relic of the past.
- Yellow Pages – Local search engines and combination search/listing services like Reach Local will make these disappear.
- Classified Ads – The Internet has made so many things obsolete that newspaper classified ads might sound like just another trivial item.
- Movie Rental Stores – While Netflix is looking up at the moment, Blockbuster keeps closing store locations by the hundreds.
- Dial-up Internet Access – Affordable high speed Internet connections have all but pounded the final nail in the coffin of dial-up Internet access.
- Phone Land Lines – Of the homes that had land lines, one in eight only received calls on their cells.
- Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs – The population is down 70% since 1990.
- VCRs – Pre-recorded VHS tapes are largely gone and VHS decks are practically nowhere to be found.
- Ash Trees – In less than a decade, the emerald ash borer has killed millions of trees in the Midwest, and continues to spread.
- Ham Radio – In the past five years , the number of people holding active ham radio licenses has dropped by 50,000.
- Cameras That Use Film – It doesn’t require a statistician to prove the rapid disappearance of the film camera in America.
- Hand-Written Letters – 183 billion e-mails are sent each day. So where is there room for the elegant, polite hand-written letter?
- Personal Checks – 23% of consumers plan to decrease their use of checks over the next two years.
- News Magazines and TV News – In 1984, all three network evening-news programs combined had 40 million viewers. In 2008, they have half that.
- Drive-in Theaters – During the peak in 1958, there were more than 4,000 drive-in theaters in this country, but in 2007 only 405 drive-ins were still operating.