Kid’s these days, right? They don’t know anything. Our parent’s said it about us, and we’ll say it about our kids some day too. But what will we be talking about? The first decade of the 21st century has rendered a lot of familiar things obsolete. So much so that children born in 2011 may either not realize they ever existed or find them quaint at best.
Top of that list, of course, is the VHS tape. VHS has come and gone in a relatively short window of time, as a child of the 1980’s, I remember a time before VHS was a common staple in the home. Now it’s pretty much gone for ever – it’s hard to even find a home with a working VHS player, much less VHS tapes. In fact, many of us don’t use any kind of physical medium to store our movies and music any more – with iTunes and Netflix streaming, it’s hard to see the use for DVD and CD’s these days.
Movie rental stores are following VHS tapes the way of the dinosaur. With Blockbuster filing for Chapter 11 last year, the last of the behemoths seems to have bitten the dust. There are still rental shops out there, including a few Blockbusters, but it seems highly likely that in 15 years your teenager won’t know what you’re talking about when you say, “lets go rent a movie.”
Other likely extinctions include everything from long distance phone service – who needs it with internet and cellular plans that offer free calls nation wide – travel agents, newspaper classifieds (hello Craigslist), the yellow pages, the white pages, your fax machine (why fax when you can scan and email) and the evening news.
