Another thing cellphones made obsolete are public payphones. Now that we all carry a mobile phone in our pockets, we simply have no use for them. Once an acceptable means of communication, these days payphones mostly serve as trendy photobooths.
In some places, municipalities are trying to find new uses for payphone booths. Until then, it looks like people are going to keep using them as impromptu studio space for amateur cellphone photographers.
ID Cards
Along with driver’s licenses, ID cards will soon be something only our parents had. We have phones that recognize our faces and doors that recognize our fingerprints. There is no reason why we would need a plastic card with our picture on it for people to know who we are.
The way we see it, next time you get carded at a bar you will just need to have your fingerprint scanned to prove you’re 18 or older.
Thumb Drives
Sure, carrying a thumb drive is a lot easier than lugging around the big block of an external hard drive. It’s light, easy to use, and we can easily fit it in our pockets, wallets, or with our keys. Still, despite it being so efficient, soon enough we will have no use for it.
Thanks to cloud storage technology, we won’t have to physically carry any type of storage unit, no matter how simple or light it is.
Neighborhood Post Boxes
Once upon a time, people who wanted to send a message to their loved ones had to go through a lot. They had to write the message by hand on a piece of paper, stuff that paper into an envelope, put a stamp on it, insert it into a neighborhood post box, wait and hope for the best.
Now they send each other texts and emails. This means we are both more efficient and no longer in need of neighborhood post boxes. Those boxes can still be found all over the US, but at this point, they are about as functional as statues.
Reference Books
Looking for a dictionary word, an encyclopedic entry or some general information? We think it would be safe to assume that the first place you look is not a reference book in the nearby library. Those huge books are simply less effective comparing to the internet at our fingertips.
Also, reference books often need to be edited in order to keep them updated with the latest information. This means that each of them is doomed to become irrelevant and that’s just wasting paper if you ask us.