‘Futurist’ Predicts The 5 Things That Will ‘Disappear’ In The Next Decade

Michael McQueen is a “futurist” from Sydney, and he made a few predictions that piqued my interest.

I can’t help it. The rate of change is wild. I’m only 25, but yes. I remember the world before iPhones. I remember floppy disks. I remember having to get off our dinosaur of a computer because my mom was expecting a call. I remember my dad buying me my first ever CD (Jump 5) from the Christian bookstore. I had one of those portable CD players, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I remember getting a pair of “texting” devices for my birthday one year. It only worked within a 10-foot range and the message had to be really short, so me and my sister would text each other “hi” back and forth from different levels of our bunk bed. I remember moving up the technology ladder and getting an iPod touch and a red Motorola Razor. Yep. TWO devices. One for music, one for phone calls and LIMITED texting.

It’s amazing how quickly we phase things out, which brings me back to McQueen. He’s predicting five things that will phase out in the next decade.

I’m not sure if I agree with all of them, but here goes nothing.

1.) Credit cards

Mr McQueen explained that there are a variety of new technologies appearing on the market that will soon make credit cards useless.

One such company who has done this is the financial services Square, who have developed and released technology that will identify you upon entry to a store.

‘Their Pay By Name system detects when a known mobile phone is in range, identifies the buyer, and displays his or her face on a screen so that the person behind the register can simply tap the picture to complete the transaction,’ Mr McQueen said

I could see credit cards transitioning to something else, but the facial recognition thing totally freaks me out.

2.) iTunes

‘It was recently announced that Apple Music has 38 million paying subscribers, adding nearly 2 million subscribers a month, with more than 6 million trialing the service for free. That’s a lot of people who aren’t downloading music anymore,’ he said.

‘According to both Nielsen Music and BuzzAngle, music downloads suffered double-digit drops last year. And they’ve been sinking for years.’

I don’t know about that. iTunes has been around for what? 17 years? And now it offers Apple Music, which basically allows you to download whatever the heck you want every month for 10 bucks. (I’m a subscriber.)

Meh. Not sure. I guess something else could take over. *shrugs*

3.) Parking garages

He believes parking garages are going to go out of style, because self-driving cars are going to take off.

They predict that by 2027, 90 per cent of passenger miles in the US each year will be travelled in autonomous vehicles and that many of those vehicles will not be owned by the ‘driver’,’ he said.

‘Instead, this 90 per cent of travel will be done in driverless Uber-style vehicles, which will make up 60 per cent of the vehicles on the road.’

I disagree with that one. People LOVE their cars. I don’t see myself ever getting on board with a self-driving vehicle. I like being in control, and I freaking love my car.

Nope. Don’t see that one.

4.) Call centers

‘By 2020, technology research leader Gartner estimates that AI-powered chatbots will be responsible for a full 85 per cent of customer service interactions,’ Mr McQueen said.

‘As Artificial Intelligence advances, reducing reliance on human representatives undoubtedly spells job losses.’

That will suck, just because when I call for help, I don’t want to speak to a freaking robot. I WANT A REAL PERSON TO HELP ME.

5.) Service stations.

Many people won’t be able to imagine a world without a service station as the first record of one was in 1913.

Mr McQueen believes that soon they will no longer be around and this will be because of the decrease in people using petrol.

‘The growth of electric vehicles will see demise of need for petrol,’ he said.

Yeah, no. I don’t see gas stations going ANYWHERE.

What do you think? What are some things that you see “going extinct”? One thing my dad and I talk about a lot is the slow disappearance of shopping malls. I don’t want them to go, but I can totally see that happening eventually. I don’t think they’ll COMPLETELY disappear, but I certainly see them becoming less relevant. Online shopping dominates.

What are YOUR predictions?

h/t Daily Mail