Which current things do you think will disappear entirely in the next 5-10 years?

[Politicians247UnderwearExtinguishingService]

Looking at the world as we see it today and the way the wind is blowing, which things that are currently (and have often long been) a part of many of our lives can you see just completely vanishing completely - whether through the writing being on the wall for them and nobody wanting them anymore, or through actually being officially scrapped/banned?

So far, I've come up with (and there's every chance that I'll turn out to be hopelessly and laughably wrong):

TV licence in its current format. I don't think the BBC will disappear at all, but their privileged funding model, payable for watching ALL live TV, will only be sustainable for maybe 5 more years at most.

Broadcast/terrestrial/scheduled TV.

Cash and all bank branches. Also bank cards - all will be incorporated in phones as standard or swapped for implants.

Royal Mail. I think Amazon will branch into collections as well as just deliveries, with a much cheaper, quicker and more reliable service - probably more for parcels, as written letters become increasingly obsolete.
Also post offices will completely disappear.

Humans being allowed to drive vehicles - also leading to no need for anybody to actually own a car of their own, if they can use an app to summon a driverless pod at any time.

Printed newspapers and magazines, as well as paper utility bills, invoices, receipts etc. No urging to switch to receiving things online, as that will simply be the only option - even for important official documents. Before long, maybe all paper will be gone and seen as much as a relic of the past as parchment is now.

Private bonfires and fireworks.

Learning foreign languages - everybody will speak into their phones and the other person will automatically and seamlessly hear it in their own language - quite probably in the exact same voice.

In-person voting.

The option/ability to live life without being online.

There must be loads more... what else?!

This is a lot to achieve in 5 years when we currently can't organise the country as is!

I'm not sure all bank cards as implants only is 5-10 years away :D

Women with untouched real faces

Won’t completely disappear but I think younger generations won’t be so keen to cover themselves in tattoos before they’re barely 20.

The letter 'A'?

No, I agree! I didn't know what timespan to give. I think some changes are already on the horizon, whereas others may take significantly longer; but none of us can know how quickly certain developments may (or may not) take hold.

All we can do here, really, is to ponder what we think may change and when - but we could be right or equally as far off (as PP said) as the past expectations that we would all have Jetsons-style cars as standard now!

One thing I always find amusing (guilty pleasure!) is watching old episodes of Bullseye from the 1980s and seeing the great prizes that people are so very eager to win, and how many of them wouldn’t even be taken by anybody if brand new ones were put out with a sign saying 'free - help yourself' nowadays!

Common sense, skills, attention spans, patience …

In 10 years? None of these. Cash, broadcast tv, debit cards, cars etc will all be here, there will be alternatives but people are and will continue to use them. Take tv, huge swathes of the country only watch broadcast tv, many more predominantly watch it - maybe not in the fashionable parts of north London but in the real world people still tune in daily to watch things! I know plenty of people that predominantly use cash, we take at least 1/3 of takings in cash at the shop I volunteer in. And here people still buy newspapers - I’m the outlier as I haven’t bought a paper in 15 years (except the edition my dc’s commission was listed in)

Ooh I don't know about the cars and living rurally, it would be nice to be able to go to the pub for once without uttering the line "No thanks I'm driving". It might lead to a renaissance for rural pubs!

But the pompous men made me laugh so hard....my sworn enemy is Nigel the Neighbour who used to be a pilot. How do I know he used to be a pilot you ask? Because every conversation he has with mutual neighbours or passers by involves him revealing the fact he used to be a pilot at the top of his voice 😆😆😆

We can but hope. The amount it costs us for the outcomes we get are appalling value for money. We need to move to a continental model instead of one that is 80 years old and not fit for purpose.

Cash won't disappear - there are far too many people that still use it.There's still a whole tranche of people that can't / don't do online banking, don't/can't have smartphones etc, often the elderly and disabled, and it would cause uproar if you removed the cash option from them.

And as bank branches disappear, far more people then become reliant on the Post Office for their banking services, so they won't disappear either.

This is my concern I work in one and it’s sooo convenient as a mother, super near my home and dcs school. A bunch nearby are being shut down I don’t know what I’ll do if my one is next.

Oh and I for one love the BBC! The licence fee is a bargain for what it funds compared to streaming.

Do you know what the two most watched programmes in the uk currently are?

both are on the BBC! (Strictly and celebrity traitors). People are talking about these in the pub, in the shops and I imagine in offices (as i work alone I have no one to discuss with)

The ability to know if news is real or not. Fake AI videos are getting better by the day.

@Zebedee999

guessing you don’t know anything about the various European models? All cost far more to you the individual, most have copays, outcomes are not much better if at all and they have the same issues of staff shortages, rising drugs bills and issues with exponentially rising mental health issues. How do I know, have a relative working for a health think tank in the EU

Lol. They can wait for me to link everything on my finger print or mobile phone.
Agree with TV, media in general and fireworks. I add smoking outdoor.

Myself - I will disappear back to my own country as soon as I practically can.

No they won't. Air fryers do not do all the things that hob and oven do.

Men <hopeful>

I am really fucking hoping that housework and cooking will disappear, to be outsourced to willing robots.
But what I see is my job taken over by AI, while I plod around emptying the dishwasher.

I actually don’t think we will lose cash and printed documents. Although it may look as if the world is going that way at the moment, I think that every time there is another cyber attack and the threat of them, this will send people the other way as trust in the safety of technology will go back a few years. Likewise, the driverless cars.

Learning languages - I think is already less important at school and being able to communicate via a language App does mean it’s less of a necessity, but I think that anyone who travels regularly to a country with a particular language would still try to learn that language as who wants to speak into their phone every time they want to pass the time of day with someone?

I am optimistically hoping that in the next couple of generations, people start rejecting the chronically online life and socialising with real humans becomes cool again.

It sounds like an early 2000 dystopian YA novel, but in the same way a lot of Gen-Z prefer not to drink and smoke like the older generations did, I’m hoping that as more information comes out about how bad screen addiction is that their children and grandchildren reject that too.

I do still think AI and the internet are going to be a big part of life but I can see brands marketing human-friendly products in the same way they now market eco-friendly. Banks that don’t use AI, publishers that only publish non-AI work, small shops where you can see and speak to the person who made the product.

I admit I don’t think it will be soon and I think it’s all going to get worse before it gets better, but I am hopeful that one day things will cycle back around again.

One of my biggest concerns is how easy it is to spread propaganda especially on algorithm-driven platforms like TikTok. I actually think that “technology” as a whole gets a lot of flak, and like I say I do think screen addiction is a genuine issue, but I really believe things fell apart when social media started using algorithms to push content to people. If we were still back in a time where you’d search out and browse forums and just see posts from your own friends on social media about what they were having for dinner, things would not be perfect but nowhere near as bad as it is now.

I have not really answered the question. I agree with a large amount of what’s been posted but I think it will be slower than expected.

I strongly disagree. If you’re slim and not short, they look fantastic. mind you, that’s true of most clothes. Except skinny jeans. They looked awful on everyone.

Coming back to stay on point a bit more, I think soon a lot of information will come out about how damaging screens are to all of us and especially young people.

I think using devices like iPads in classrooms (even for educational or digital literacy purposes) will have stopped completely in the next 20 years.

I think reminiscing on giving your toddler an iPad in the restaurant will be the equivalent of remembering squeezing the kids in the back with no car seats.

I think images of public places where every adult is staring at their phone ignoring each other will be something printed in history books that shocks children reading them.

Not saying this as a screen-free household by the way. I use my phone way too much and my DC loves watching cartoons. But I think it’s bad for us - much worse than we realise.

I think schools using iPads to teach kids how to live in a modern world is like schools giving kids chocolate to teach them how to function in a junk-food filled world.

This isn’t a dig at teachers. I worked in education many years ago and the push to use technology in the classroom always got my back up even then.

Do you see a particular demographic with those, though?

I think a lot of changes don't necessarily come because individual people choose to make them, but more because they're popular on a society level with older generations who gradually leave us, and are replaced by younger generations that don't share the love for, or even see any point in, the things that the older folk always held dear.

I'm middle aged, so I see things from both sides: the things that older people still value, some of which I also do and some of which I don't; and the various things that are still very relevant to me, but which many people who are (much!) younger than me either still value or couldn't care less about!

Why do you say live concerts, theatre and restaurants? Do you mean because people can’t afford to go any more? There will always be people with money. If you are thinking in terms of people preferring to spend time online in their own homes, I think the opposite. We had lockdown and initially we were all grateful for what technology bought to us at home but it didn’t take long for most people to want to be out and about again. Many people in their teens and 20s are enjoy live concerts and music festivals so I don’t see why this should die out.

On your other post where you speak of ‘the current generation’ conducting relationships in virtual spaces- do you mean teens?