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?!

I'm not just talking about things being wrenched away from folk who want them, though, but thinking also of things whereby the main people who value/need/rely on them - often older generations - will gradually leave us, with younger generations having a completely different mindset.

Nobody in power actually ever banned VHS video tapes or music cassettes, but society as a whole decided that they didn't want them anymore, so they just quickly disappeared.

I suppose you could say similar about village pubs and individual small shops too: they keep going indefinitely for as long as ever people still use them; but once the people stop coming for whatever reasons, their days are sharply numbered.

Democracy in the US

I agree with you that at the moment it looks as if things are heading that way. I like to think that there will be a big push back against this in the near future, hopefully before it’s too late.

I'd be inclined to agree. I have major problems with the BBC and their ethos and principles (as well as their arrogance), but I really enjoy and value a great deal of their output - so I would definitely be signing up to subscribe (and probably paying more than now).

I just think the licensing model for one corporation to get the money for all live TV that people watch - especially the harassment and bullying tactics of people who don't have a licence because they don't need one, as though broadcast TV were still seen as essential as it was by most a few decades back - is entirely unsustainable and unjustifiable.

This is what I just don't get. Why aren't we using AI to take over all of the tedious, dull ongoing maintenance tasks, to free up humans to do the fun, creative and intelligence-based tasks?

I use my kindle with the back light completely off and set the typeface quite large so it’s much more comfortable for me than a normal book.

The ability for most people to lead a modest life without overwhelming stress and fear will disappear entirely within the next 5 to 10 years.

With any luck Google’s AI overview will be long gone. An annoying addition to searches, only disabled by adding a random swear word to your search.

Contact law solicitors ,ai will be able to do it and maybe even doctors

Peace in Europe

How?

Them! 🤣

I hope this isn’t what the world will be like in 5 years, sounds very bleak and depressing!

I do think we are coming to the end of humans time on Earth though, so I think your prediction about robot partners and robot children will soon be a reality.

Robotics needs to catch up first. It's incredibly expensive.

Because a human on minimum wage or doing the labour in their own home for free if cheaper than building and running a robot. However for creative and complex jobs that require training and limited numbers of humans have the skill and training to do these tasks, it’s cheaper to get software to do a “good enough” job than a human.

It’s not working class jobs that will be replaced, it’ll be middle class ones.

I think on the OP’s timetable, petrol stations, although that might be more like 20 years. I can’t see anyone building a new petrol station now.

The speed the electric car charging network has been built is interesting- there’s still gaps but nowhere near that there was 5-10 years ago. I do think it’ll start going the other way, it being less profitable to run petrol stations once large numbers of cars are electric.

For more like 30+ years time, the concept of extended family.

“One and done” or two at most dcs is becoming much more normalise. There will be a generation getting married who don’t have siblings, don’t have cousins. Aunts, uncles etc. these won’t be for middle class people. The age people have dcs going up, the age of marriage going up, few will have live grandparents at their weddings.

I agree with everything you have said.

I hate social media. It’s like people have had personality transplants in the past decade and I blame it on social media. It’s an echo chamber of nastiness, and encourages stalking and abusive behaviours.

I’ve said similar to me DH - I hope one day it’s frowned upon like cigarette smoking.

This is all happening in 5-10 years?

I don’t know really. Maybe various managements will realise that AI doesn’t bring the benefit to their customers that real people do, and it’s false economy? Customers will vote with their feet? Government will realise there is a need to occupy people who are no longer able to work? I just think for younger people it needs to happen. My job is now being done by AI and I don’t think outcomes are good. For me personally, it’s fine, I have taken early retirement, but for clients and younger workers it’s not good.

This is my DS. Only child, his dad was an only child and my brother has no children. It’s not a class or intentional thing, just happened that way.

Maybe various managements will realise that AI doesn’t bring the benefit to their customers that real people do, and it’s false economy?

I dunno, I'm gloomy. I think on an individual basis, most people do not want a world where business, culture, communication and so on are shaped by the likes of musk and his tech bros - sociopaths who struggle with human interaction and who are building a parallel virtual existence to compensate for/counteract that. I mean, I think this is what a lot of the "technological revolution" is, at core. But, businesses are hoovering it up, despite businesses being made up of individual people, because a business first responsibility is to its bottom line. A business itself has no conscience, wider purpose or human feeling. So the tech bros were always going to win.

Most** spontaneous European travel, for people who don't have an EU/EEA/Schengen country passport.

ETIAS is due to be introduced in Q4 2026, so all travel to the EU (minus Ireland) plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and the de facto Schengen microstates will require advanced application, payment (20€) and approval (USA ETA style).

**There's still Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Ukraine, though.

Unless the government does eventually outright ban them, petrol and diesel cars will be around for a long time, albeit in ever decreasing numbers. After all, there are still people who maintain and keep cars from a century ago!

It will be interesting to see when the tipping point comes, after which the demand for petrol and diesel is not enough to sustain a profitable business. Maybe the paradigm will just shift, so instead of there being a petrol station that also sells drinks and snacks, newspapers and dead flowers, they will become much bigger shops - selling a much greater range of stuff - that happen to have a couple of pumps for old-fashioned fuels in a distant corner of the car park.

Maybe like a lot of existing petrol stations have cages in the corner with Calor gas bottles for sale, but it's only a minor little extra line that they also offer - I personally have never seen anybody buying one; absolutely nobody would dream of referring to them as 'Calor gas stations'.

I also wonder how long the current MoT test situation will go on for. With electric vehicles, stuffed with sensors to monitor absolutely everything, once all cars are connected in to a central grid - like with smart meters - all faults can be identified and notified centrally in a moment, with an automated email ordering the owner to get something fixed within a month/week/cease driving immediately, depending on the seriousness of the fault - with fines sent out automatically and even the police called out in extreme cases. I certainly think the idea of a single annual snapshot of the roadworthiness of a car - that's then officially approved for a year - will become obsolete.

It's in the news today that there are plans afoot for charging EV's for every mile they travel, as an equivalent of tax on petrol and diesel for ICE cars. They're saying about people buying credits in advance based on their estimated mileage for the year - with credits or extra payments due at the end of the year/period based on actual odometer figures - but this will soon get very tedious and obviously very quickly move to a real-time report and due charges being debited automatically on a frequent basis.

I thh hi ink owning a car will disappear.

Prople will just pay a sub towards a driverless car company. Call one when they want. Go where they want. Car drives itself to next customer.