The old UHF and VHF TV channels are on the way out. When American TV goes digital next year, the frequency range from Channel 2 to Channel 83, or wherever UHF ends, will be turned over to the corporations who just bought them at auction, Verizon mostly.
We’ll probably still say “Channel 2” or “Channel 4” for decades, if not generations, but it’ll just be one of those anachronistic holdovers like “dialing” a phone.
Bookstores.
A few used bookstores will remain, but big buildings with shelves filled with brand new books will disappear. New books will be downloaded onto dedicated players like the Kindle or onto hybrid PDA/phone/music players.
I bought a new one yesterday.
Yup. My mother is a nurse and wears her watch upside down. I didn’t think much about it until I read the following passage in Good Omens (perhaps not entirely accurate as I can’t find the book):
Between my mother and that book, wearing your watch upside down pretty much became the thing nurses do, to me. My mother does keep her head cool in emergencies too, but she rarely craves a cup of tea.
Wine corks, and (sadly) the whole apparatus that goes with them. Cork taint is just too expensive to the industry. While there will be a few holdouts like Champagne, corkscrews will be a thing of the past. Curiosities on the Antiques Roadshow of 2100.
And the Christian Brothers. Marvellous organisation in their time for bringing enducation to the poor. But now so hopelessly compromised by scandal that I doubt they can recruit effectively.
Maybe bike gangs. My sources tell me the classic Harley riding 1% er, colour wearing gang is aging. Their look is too dated to attract the demographic they want to attract, and their inward-looking world view prevents any change of image. Yes, drug dealing provides a financial incentive to box on, but the numbers are dropping. They are all greying and old. They will remain nominal figures of menace with no actual bullying powers until they finally disappear like the Bodgies and the Widgies, or the Teddy boys.
Given that I don’t know a single person who uses downloaded books (including all the technophiles I know) and the fact that the option to do this has been around for a while and not taken up, I’m not sure I agree.
People like owning books in a way that’s different to owning a CD, I don’t think books to book.txt will be the same as CD to mp3.
I disagree.
Even with all possible electronic conveniences possible, there’s something about taking a book to the backyard on a sunny day to read.
No batteries to worry about either.
Artificial cork seems to be the preferred cork alternative for most of the wines I see; despite any number of explanations from the wine industry that screwcaps are better, it seems the market prefers the ceremony of cork removal… I think corkscrews will carry on.
I sure hope so, because it’d be fairly catastrophic for the Mediterranean environment if the cork forests get grubbed up due to lack of demand.
(Amazingly some of the synthetic cork manufacturers are even trying to claim that their product is more environmentally friendly because it’s not made from the bark of poor little trees :smack: )
Screw caps are catching on, though. Wine geeks know that a screw cap is no longer an indication of inferiority, and I’m seeing more screw-cap wines these days. I think they’re becoming more accepted, though I still wouldn’t give a screw-cap wine as a gift to anybody but someone I knew to be another wine geek.
And disappointing to the wine drinker, when it happens.
I have to speak up for the boxed wines with little taps on them. You can take yer screw caps and screm 'em!
Oh, I like those, too.
I’ve even heard it said recently that bottles will disappear, to be replaced by the bag-in-a-box system.
Personally, I don’t care what container my wine comes in as long as it’s good. Although I’ve long felt that the plastic bladder imparts a sweetish taste to the wine, the last time I tried one of the better boxed wines–I think it was “Black Box”, it was pretty good at that and I didn’t notice any undue sweetness.
Yikes, that must hurt.
No need for answering machines in the UK.
Your caller can leave a message and it’s free with our service from BT
I’d go further and predict the end to of the PC in any sort of form that we would recognise today. All we’re gonna have is a screen,sound some sort of input device. All the actual games, videos what have you are going to available anytime, anywhere via something that resembles wi-fi.
“I’m sick of these motherfuckin’ cell phones on this motherfuckin’ plane!”
That’s what I thought when I read that, too! 
It always amazes me when people say things like this. While I’ll never say never, something will probably not even be possible in my unborn child’s lifetime. The bandwidth is just not there and any increase in bandwidth will just result in an increase of the file size of whatever needs to be sent, leaving them in equilibrium (and on some kind of hard drive) forever.