Guess which of these things will become unnecessary in the future?
A few decades ago, people wrote texts on typewriters, wrote down phone numbers in notebooks, and listened to music through cassette recorders. But today all this equipment has been completely replaced by modern devices like computers and smartphones.
The world around us is constantly changing, which means that in some 20 years, the things we are used to will also become obsolete and something new will come to replace them. For example, in the future, drivers may well disappear, because cars will be able to drive on their own.
Bank cards, remote controls, cables for charging devices, shopping malls and much more will also disappear. As part of this article, I propose to talk about 20 things that by 2040 will become useless old stuff.
Yahoo Finance shared a list of twenty things that could be irrevocably outdated in 20 years . You may think that some of the things mentioned below will remain relevant even in the second half of the 21st century. You can explain your point of view in our Telegram chat. At the same time, you will find out the opinions of other people.
Content
- Keys
- Passwords
- Drivers
- Traffic jams and accidents
- Parking meters
- Bank cards
- Cash
- Remote controls
- Plastic bags
- Smartphone charging cables
- Paper checks
- Paper documents
- Wallets
- Hard disks
- Calculators
- Manual Transmission
- Signatures
- Shopping centers
- Working people
- Open offices
Keys
Almost everyone has keys in their pockets. Since childhood, we carry the keys to the apartment with us, and as we age, many of us have car keys. And it's hardly possible to call them comfortable things. After all, not only are they constantly lost, but they also scratch the equipment lying in the bag. But in the future, doors could be protected with fingerprint scanners or a face-recognition camera. Electronic locks with an access code or a fingerprint scanner can be ordered and installed on the door right now. They cost around 150 USD.
In the future, we will give up keys and will use fingerprints to open doors.
Passwords
The same fate awaits passwords. Today, when creating any account, you need to come up with a complex password with upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. And then this password somehow needs to be remembered and typed every time you log into your account. But in the future, all of this will also likely be replaced by fingerprint scanners. Smartphones and laptops have long been equipped with them, and in a few years fingerprints will open access to websites.
Passwords will also be replaced with fingerprints
Drivers
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, motorists will also disappear. By 2024, almost all car manufacturers want to launch models with an automatic driving system. People will just get into the salon, indicate the desired point on the map and go about their business while the car takes them to the place. At the moment, cars do not cope well with self-driving, but in the future the situation should get better.
Probably, our children will be surprised that once we ourselves drove cars
Traffic jams and accidents
Cars will drive independently and will constantly communicate with each other. They will be able to choose the fastest routes, but they will not interfere with each other. From this it follows that congestion and traffic accidents will decrease or disappear altogether as a phenomenon. And that's great news because car accidents claim millions of lives.
People waste a lot of time in traffic jams
Parking meters
Having stopped in the parking lot, the driver must independently set his arrival time on the timer. Inspectors use such counters to check the time that cars are idle in parking lots. But in the future, these vehicles will be replaced by a license plate recognition system, and the money for parking will be debited from the drivers' cards.
Parking meter in the USA
Bank cards
Bank cards for paying for goods are disappearing now. Even in small towns, you can pay money using the NFC built into smartphones. Moreover, even ATMs are equipped with contactless technologies, so there is almost no need for plastic cards. Virtual cards are our future.
Bank cards are not needed now
Cash
Paper money and coins will also become useless junk. Many people are already accustomed to contactless payments using smartphones or smart watches. And during the coronavirus pandemic, many people stopped using cash, because diseases can be transmitted through them. Anyway, money is one of the dirtiest things in the truest sense of the word. They go through thousands of hands. So there is practically no doubt that cash will disappear in 20 years.
You probably already rarely use cash yourself.
Remote controls
In the early 2000s, remote controls lay on sofas and tables in all homes. They allowed you to change channels on the TV, turn on music on a tape recorder, adjust the air conditioner, and so on. But today only a smartphone is needed to control modern technology. There are even relatively inexpensive Bluetooth-controlled bulbs. So remote controls will also sink into oblivion.
How often do you use remotes? Most likely rare
Plastic bags
Plastic has literally flooded our planet and can be found even in the most remote corners of the world's oceans . Some countries have already banned the use of reusable bags and this initiative will soon be adopted by other countries. Instead of rustling bags, people will start using reusable bags that can be washed and reused.
Plastic bags are enemies of nature!
Smartphone charging cables
Since about 2000, our tables, sofas and drawers have been equipped with charging cables for smartphones, tablets and other devices. But for several years now, expensive models have supported wireless charging. You just need to put the device on a special station and that's it - the battery is charged. Most likely, this charging method will someday become ubiquitous.
In about 20 years we will forget what it is
Paper checks
Every time in stores we are handed paper receipts with a list of purchased products and their prices. They fill our pockets and wallets, but this will come to an end in the future. Since many of us are already paying for goods using smartphones, all information is recorded in the application. So there will be no need for paper checks in the future.
Sometimes paper checks are so long that they don't fit in your pocket. Continuous inconvenience
Paper documents
If you look at it this way, all paperwork will disappear in the future. Together with money and checks, even documents will be transferred to smartphones. And this is good, because in virtual form they will be safer, because creating backups will become very easy. And heaps of paper documents take up a lot of space, which is far from very good.
In the future, all this chaos won't be
Wallets
There will be no cash, checks or documents. And this means that the wallets in which we are used to storing all this will disappear. It will be impossible to surprise someone with a fat wallet - everything will be stored in a virtual format. Well, one less fashion accessory.
Wallets will disappear, but they have been with us since ancient times!
Hard disks
Hard disks allow computers to store a lot of information. But the days when it was important for people to store many files locally are over. Today, for comfortable use of a computer, a 256 Gigabyte SSD is enough, because most of the data is stored in cloud storage. You don't need to store tons of folders of music and movies, because services like Spotify and Netflix have them.
Our children won't even understand what it is
Calculators
In the 2000s, many people had a calculator with them. It was especially useful for students and salespeople. But today any smartphone can perform these functions. You don't even need to install the application, because it is almost everywhere. And is it really necessary if Siri, Google Assistant and other voice assistants are perfect for calculator functions?
How long have you been using a conventional calculator?
Manual Transmission
Above, we talked about the fact that people will stop driving cars because they will be able to drive on their own. But this will really only happen by 2040. For about 20 years, people will continue to be drivers, but this will be more easy thanks to the automatic transmission. According to data for 2019, around 200,000 vehicles with batteries were sold in USA. People are clearly losing interest in manual transmission vehicles and they may soon disappear.
A manual transmission is no longer of interest to anyone, everyone wants automatic
Signatures
Any important document becomes valid only after a person puts his signature. However, during the coronavirus pandemic, people were unable to meet in person. Therefore, electronic signatures have gained even more popularity than before. Some companies have already confirmed the effectiveness of remote work, so in the future, people will clearly be signing by hand.
Even signatures will become virtual in the future
Shopping centers
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, many shopping malls have been forced to remain closed for a long time. As of December 2020, they are open, but you can only enter in masks, and there are guards at the door and measure the body temperature of visitors. In order not to lose income, many retailers have learned how to sell products over the Internet. You can order goods without leaving your home - they are delivered by a courier. Perhaps in the future, shopping centers will disappear completely.
However, this point is not very hard to believe, because there are also cinemas and cafes in shopping centers.
Working people
Many "human" tasks are already being performed by robots, and this fact worries many people. In factories, manipulators are increasingly being installed that do the job much faster and more accurately than humans. So in the future, human labor may also disappear. At least physically. So now is the time to slowly learn new professions. Better if they are related to programming, because smart technology will need to be configured.
Robot at Mercedes Benz factory
Open offices
In the future, many people will work remotely, but office workers are unlikely to disappear anywhere. But the office space will obviously look different. The coronavirus pandemic has shown us how contagious diseases can be. Therefore, there will probably be partitions between office workers in the future. And conversations at the cooler will be kept to a minimum.
Offices will look completely different in the future
Over time, not only our environment will change, but also ourselves. And it's not just about lifestyle and habits, but also about appearance.
