-Newspapers
-Skyscrapers
-The personal computer as we know it
-The television as we know it
-Landline telephones
-The automobile as we know it
-Strip malls
-The print magazine
-Corporate radio
-[legal, mass produced] cigarettes
-Fast food
-Traditional, public K-12 education
-Traditional post-secondary liberal arts education
-Cash
-The stock market
-The public library
-The major motion picture
Now, of course, let’s be reasonable here; I am in no way suggesting that all of the automobiles or high rise buildings now in existence will somehow vaporize. I’m wondering if at some point in the next 90 years they might just become irrelevant, and new ones won’t be made anymore. Likewise, I think if there are 3 or 4 newspapers left in the year 2100, with a circulation of 2,500 each, it will be safe to say for practical purposes that the newspaper is dead.
Also, I’m aiming for big things here. Note that I didn’t include things like hairstyles, toys, trends, etc.
And, as a fun addendum: what’s already gone? The first thing that comes to mind is the phone booth. You can find them here and there, probably more in older urban areas, but cell phones pretty effectively killed them.
Land lines have already been leapfrogged and bypassed in the developing world, they went straight to cell phones.
I’m guessing we will have phones that look like landlines, but are actually mobile phones because there are situations where having a phone in a store, at a desk, etc. is still helpful and they are easier to operate than cell phones due to their larger size, plus they look more communal and permanent.
So the landline infrastructure will decay and disappear, but I think we will still have mobile phones designed to look like landline phones at desks, hotel rooms, etc.
I don’t think the public library will disappear. You can rent books, CDs and movies for free there. You can study, get job help, socialize, have meetings, etc. Too much goes on at a library for that to go away.
Why would we lose fast food, skyscrapers, liberal arts educations or cash? If anything those will become more common in the 21st century. China has far more fast food, skyscrapers and cash than they used to. And as nations develop they can focus on liberal arts educations to create well rounded citizens (rather than having people go straight to factories after primary school).
I think media, communications & energy will all drastically change. Of course that is easy for me to say because they already are changing drastically. Did anyone in 1960 see the drastic changes in those fields that’d occur by 2010 (affordable wind turbines, solar power, cell phones, computers, etc)? I doubt it.
So I really don’t know for sure what’ll change or become irrelevant.
I think the factory model may die out and be replaced by manufacturing on a smaller level due to fab-labs and (eventually) nanobots.
Also I think large scale electric plants may die off as solar power becomes dirt cheap and battery power becomes extremely efficient. No need to build and maintain thousands of miles of electric lines when cheap solar panels and batteries can keep people going locally.
By the end of the century, we’ll actually have a paperless office. It hasn’t been around the corner for that long, and there are lots of businesses which are already paperless. They just have to have scanning centers because everybody else isn’t.
Only if you insist on putting something that looks like a handwritten name in a blank on the image. Encryption technology has given us much better ways of authenticating a document.
For IEEE conferences authors typically digitally sign copyright forms. We might also have biometric identification systems by then which will be much safer than signatures.
If someone needs a scan of a signature, you scan the document, and attach it to an email. It’s called email, people. That way the doc gets to the person who wants it, rather than to some random machine in some office that might or might not be turned on, and who nobody checks because fax machines are horrible.
Right after you send a fax, you have to send an email asking if the fax came through and is legible and wasn’t crumpled up or useless anyway, so why not just send the doc via email in the first place?
In my opinion newspapers*, the personal computer as we know it**, -the television as we know it**, landline telephones***, the print magazine*, and cash* could easily be gone in the first world by 2100.
The automobile as we know it** and [legal, mass produced] cigarettes might be gone too, maybe.
The rest will still be around, unless we nuke ourselves to dust or something.
physical paper newspapers, magazines, and cash, that is
** Depending on how you define “as we know it”. I know it as stationary desktop boxes, which may be gone. A laptop form will exist, even if it’s annoyingly small. And televisions will likely be 3-d, does that count? And autos might all be electric.
*** wired areas will likely exist, like inside hotels or offices, radiating from a wireless-switchboard. Otherwise people will wander off with your phones.
-Newspapers
Print newspapers yes, since we’ll have good electronic paper. Newspapers as centers of news gathering, no, since without a newspaper where would a blogger copy from? Reporters are going to stay important, they will just publish immediately after editing.
-Skyscrapers
Why would this go away? In fact, I think there will be more, since if you increase the density of cities there will be more incentive to live close to work and save expensive fuel. There may be somewhat more work from home, but the one thing any electronic meeting is lacking is the subtle hallway conversation.
-The personal computer as we know it
On its way out already.
-The television as we know it
Why? Big screens are good - since you can’t carry around a big screen, there will be a TV. Perhaps integrated into the wireless network, but still a TV.
-Landline telephones
Not only this, but landline internet access. Why should you have to rebroadcast from a wireless router when you can log into a wireless provider’s network from home - or on the road. Our phones do it, our laptops will also.
-The automobile as we know it
In the sense of gasoline powered or in the sense of personal transportation vehicle?
-Strip malls
Nah, but they may be more made up of service facilities, restaurants, and stores where you can look at samples of merchandise, to be ordered for later.
-The print magazine
Print high tech trade magazines are dying off rapidly, becoming web only.
-Corporate radio
???
-[legal, mass produced] cigarettes
Maybe. Maybe a niche product.
-Fast food
No. Will be healthier, but will still be fast.
-Traditional, public K-12 education
-Traditional post-secondary liberal arts education
Doubt either of these are going away.
-Cash
Perhaps
-The stock market
People yelling at each other, yes. As a market, no.
-The public library
Depends on how DRM plays out.
-The major motion picture
No way. Making a complex piece of entertainment, with music, script, and direction, is complex and expensive. It might be possible that actors will go away, but not the major motion picture. Consider video games. They began in a basement, written by a couple of people, with no actors. Now they are massive productions with voice talent.
One thing you left out - mass produced clothing. By 2100 we will have small factories that can make lots of 1 of things like most mass market clothing. Why buy an average size when you can buy something designed for your current body size and weight?
Another thing is bookstores. (Music stores are dead already.) You just download a book directly from the editor/publisher. We still have them as a way of checking quality. Self published books will be no more prevalent than they are today - less so, since they’ll only exist on web sites.
The desktop computer as we know it will definately be gone. Heck, probably in 20 years or less. There will be displays, there will be input devices, there will be processors, there will be data storage, but these things won’t be hooked up together like they are now.
There will be “laptops”, in the sense that you’ll be able to get a portable display, a portable input interface, and portable data storage in any configuration you like combined into one device. But that device will just be a convenient way of interfacing with the global network when you’re expecting to be moving around. This device will probably be really really really small when you’re not using it, except if the keyboard still remains as a standard input device. I have a hard time imagining a full sized keyboard that you can fold up and put in your pocket.
If every person gets a phone number and phone as soon as they can talk, which will likely be the case, why would a hotel or office have a phone at all? Airport payphones used to be very crowded and plentiful, now there are few of them and not heavily used. Anyhow, if there is one, it could be chained down like a bank pen.
