The World As We Know It Will Soon End (Part 3)

Well, we have looked at some of the institutions and things in nature that we probably see come to an end. Some of those natural things can be saved with a lot of help. But now we must go to things electrical and electronic.

Brick and Mortar video rental stores are on the endangered list. Netflix and the new Red Box as well as lots of online stores have taken their toll on the video rental business. Movie Gallery recently filed for bankruptcy for the second time and will be going strictly online soon. What is clear, however, is that the video rental market, at least in its current form, is on the way out. Blockbuster (BBI), America's top rental chain, has been facing ever-decreasing revenues and is in the process of closing 1,000 stores. Movie Gallery, which spent the 1980s and 1990s buying chains and opening stores, has spent the last three years closing them. In the process, it has demonstrated the dangers of being on the business end of a changing technology. Barnes and Noble (BKS) and Borders (BGP) might want to take note: It's no fun selling typewriters in a digital world. Which indicates that brick and mortar books stores are now going-going-about to be gone.

Next on the list is the VCRs. For the better part of 30 years the VCR has been a staple of the average household. In the past few years that market has been completely decimated by the DVD and now the Digital Video Recorder (DVR). About all that is left of the old VCR age at Wally World and Radio Shack is the blank VHS tapes. They did well for us but became only a transition to another technology.

I anticipate that it will soon be lights out on the incandescent light bulb. According to various reports, only about 10% to 18% of the energy used by the incandescent bulb goes to light, the rest goes to making heat. There has already been legislation introduced in Congress to do a changeover but that will probably take up to 10 years. Knowing full well it is coming, most manufacturers will reduce their making of incandescent bulb and expand on the newer, more efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

Next we have a situation where electronics has taken over for an older technology. That would be in Cameras. Film cameras are about to come to an end. The classic photographer dealt with the technology of TAKING great pictures. Now that technology can be done on the computer to make an OK photo into a great picture worth framing. What with the digital ability of cropping, re tinting, sharpening, soft focusing backgrounds or foregrounds, lightening or darkening . . . it all can be done on your computer. Just take a gander at a well photo shopped pic and tell me you can tell. Nikon quit most of their film cameras in 2006 as did Minolta later. Some say that film cameras will never really go away and it took me a long time to buy one because of some of the features on a film camera that could not be found on a digital, but now that has been overcome so I take more digital pics than film.

News Magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and various other News type weekly or monthly magazines will be a thing of the past. Most of what you get from these magazines are "Old News." It happened a week or a month ago, that's not news. If it happened yesterday, most people know all about it and know about it from several viewpoints. Almost everyone gets news via their Cable connected TV, the radio, or their computer. Like newspapers, the news magazine will soon be a thing of the past.

The last one for today is the analog TV receivers. Eighty five percent of all homes get their signals from Cable or Satellite providers. That other 15% is dwindling rapidly and those converter boxes they got last year is only a stop gap move. The analog TV reception is about to be gone.

On my original list was Ham Radios. But in my investigation I have found that it had been slack for some years and now is on the rise . . . slowly . . . again. They have eliminated the need to learn morse code and that should help get a few more people interested, and it has.