#14: Travel Agencies

With the appearance of internet travel websites, the writing was on the wall for these operations, which took kickbacks and commissions from airlines to book passengers on one airline or another.

And with the realignment of the world economy, fewer and fewer people will be booking a trip to, say, Kenya, to shoot animals. Certainly, someone familiar with Kenya would be the better place to book your trip to shoot Babar, but you are not going to Kenya.

Even though this CEO still prefers you go with an agency, most people from the age of 35 and under have never used a travel agent. and that does not bode well for this industry. Recently, online travel agencies have slashed their booking fees, making it even more enticing to book online rather than through an agent.

Before all this, the travel agent was crucial. How could I possibly know what the best hotel is in Reno? Where would I find the time to stay on the phone with an airline reservation agent? And where would I find a car once I landed in Chicago? All this would be handled by your friendly neighborhood travel agent.

But now I can search for Reno hotels and get a nearly comprehensive list of where to stay. Airline reservations are just about 20 seconds away and I can not only book a car reservation, I can pick which car I want and all the amenities therein. And of course, if I am looking for a travel bargain (and who isn't?) I absolutely must go with something like Priceline or Hotwire.

On top of all this, there has been a recent spate of travel agents swindling people out of money. It appears the crime created by these tough times aren't just internet scams, theft and shoplifting.

Here in Boston, I noticed just yesterday that the iconic "Please Go Away Often" sign that used to grace the American Express Travel Agency in Harvard Square was recently put away.

Which made me think to write this.

#13: Yellow Pages

Twice a year, it seems, I come home to a huge stack of bound yellow paper booklets which I unwrap from its cellophane shrink-wrap and promptly put into the recycle bin.

They call them "Yellow Pages."

With the recent news that Yellow Pages publisher Idearc has a total of $9 billion in debt, it appears that task is soon to come to an end.

Formed in 1878, telephone phonebooks are only good to stack behind a steering wheel so Bobby can learn to drive. Like JC Penney, the Yellow Pages were born somewhere in Wyoming. It looks like the least populous state better start banking more on its celebrity ranchers.

Even more on deathwatch are yellow pages cousin, the "white pages." My cellphone contains all the phone numbers I need. Like many people, I don't even know my girlfriend's number. Hell, I don't even know my mom's. White pages, a directory of landlines, are quite unuseful. Even a reverse phone number lookup on whitepages.com finds no hope for looking up cellphone #s.

Such a look-up does work on Google, however.

For future generations, the white pages will be quite odd. "You mean there was a giant book that had everyone's telephone number? Available to the anyone?" Timeless telephone crank calls will be nothing but a funny memory. Even most links in this page of prank call websites are dead, after all.

Much to the pleasure of Michael Hunt's everywhere.

#12: Soap Operas

Had a few ideas for today, but once word came down that Guiding Light, a show that is so old it began as a 15-minute radio serial, is shutting down, the answer was easy.

Obviously, the main market for soap operas, the "housewife," is becoming as cliché as the form itself. Originally called soap operas because, you guessed it, they were sponsored by soap companies (Palmolive, Lever Brothers--now Unilever--etc.) whose main customer was likely stuck at home all day with some kind of early robotic washboard in what was the beginning of our unnatural obsession for cleanliness. Procter & Gamble, the megahuge multinational manufacturer, is, even still, the one who actually makes Guiding Light.

This is a form of entertainment so dated and cliche that a parody ran on network TV 30 years ago. It's hard to believe they've survived this long after the turn of the millennium.

Guiding Light was hard-up enough to introduce a budding lesbian relationship, which apparently didn't have enough heat. The one and only time I would watch this drivel was when I was at home sick from elementary school and even then it didn't make sense. I didn't have much choice--there were only 4 channels I could watch.

We won't miss soap operas because we never watched them in the first place. This is an entire realm that TWWM is based on. Phenomena that blew up with Baby Boomers and will perish with them.

Stay tuned.

#11: Landlines

"Daddy, why is that man talking on a string?" is likely something I'll hear in the next 10 years. Hollywood might be able to scrub out smoking from their old movies, but the landline cannot be erased.

What a strange notion it will seem, the idea that we had to run wiring across the country to communicate with each other. It's very much like the two-cans-and-a-string invention, though put on an international scale. We even laid wire underneath the ocean.

But now colleges are debating whether or not to even have landlines. As the great recession ripples, people are giving up their landlines. And sure Vonage is pretty freaking cheap, but Skype is cheaper. Even Iowans are fast to join the wireless world. In fact, the move toward landline cutting is most prevalent in the midwest. Of course, in many countries landlines have long been abandoned. Even three years ago, 10% of americans were wireless-only.

We hear less and less that that cellphones cause cancer. There's a cellphone just for the elderly. Even Sprint, the phone company for old people, is selling commercial air time promoting the wireless age. Soon enough, even our cell phones won't need wires.

What will happen to those billions of miles of telephone wires? I have no idea. At least the birds will still have a place to sit.

Also: telemarketers.

#10: General Motors

While I realize the thousands of people employed by "General Motors" will surely miss GM, let's hope many of them were nearing retirement age anyway.

And with Obama now finally putting his foot down (the mouth) of these over-eager, destructive companies, the future for GM gets darker by the hour. (Wagoner will be fine with his $20 million pension, btw).

Here's the thing with GM post-Bush. While 43 and his army of gas and oil cronies spent 8 years trying to corral the world oil through false flag operations and fake pretensions for war, they neglected to believe in one thing: American ingenuity.

The right-wing of American politics seems to think American companies cannot survive change. If they regulated fuel economy, GM would sink. If they mandated new fuel technology, GM would sink. If they dictated for a greener economy, GM would sink.

The thing they miss is: American companies are the best in the world at dealing with change. They are huge fish in an economy built to change. It can easily be said that companies must change or die. Change is a mandate for growth. So why didn't they believe in our home-grown companies while Toyota, Honda and the rest of the world was working toward cleaner cars? Why didn't they place even a modicum of faith in American enterprise?

I'm not one to blame Bush for everything (just nearly everything) but this one is clearly on him. Had he and his oil-rich friends saw the clear writing on the wall and forced Detroit to deal with ecological catastrophe, GM would not be on this blog.

But he didn't and they are.

#9: NBC

One of the main dinosaur networks is going away, my friend thinks its CBS. But I've long contended it's the National Broadcasting Company. For one, its parent company, "General Electric" is hobbling along, and soon enough it's going to look at an arm to chomp off. Selling the rights to its sports programming and legacy shows like Saturday Night Live will turn a pretty penny, too (Notre Dame football though? Not so much). And for chrissake, any other network would gladly buy the Today show to replace "Good Morning Douchechills" (Fox maychance?)

But instead of giving Leno the axe, they gave him a 10 o'clock spot. They've partnered with Microsoft (# __?). If they take one more misstep, they'll actually be walking backwards. CNBC much?

Don't worry, fair readers, The Office will live on (on, you know, the internet) and despite the ratings of 30 Rock, a show about a show about a network about a, network? There's not much left of this tottering beast.

Their best bet for survival is going more with folks like Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow. People that have an opinion and report, you know, actual news, but the corporate goliath that towers above them will never let such opinions loose without some serious kickbacks.

So thanks, National Broadcasting Company, for your years of entertainment.

Also: Analog?

#8: Privacy

Privacy is deader than a doornail. And good riddance.

A few years back, the Ars Electronica Festival--probably the one festival in the world I would trade a finger to attend--held the theme of privacy. But not in the way you think. The symposium was titled "Goodbye Privacy." Why the lack of privacy is good--why it's safer, more cohesive to society and brings us closer together. At first though, the American in me stood up to these nutcases. "How can you say such a thing??!"

I'm not a lawyer, hell, and I'm not about to speak to the post-doctoral crowd out there on the subject, but the fact remains you can find out all about me with a few clicks of the mouse. Identity theft happens to like 1 in a billion people, folks, no matter how much the credit card companies try to upsell us on programs to "protect us."

With the advent of the internet, and especially web 2.0, our lives are out there for everyone to see. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and we all live on Glass Ave. Should we protect children from being stalked? Absolutely of course. Should we keep some secrets secret? Sure. Does it matter if people get my PIN number? Well, if you want $171.08, go for it. It's 4425.

People claim the recent news about the NSA or the cameras in our cities are Orwell's Big Brother. Well, my big brother was pretty nice actually. And the government is now watching you? I have a little bit of a news flash for you, my friend, they've always been watching you. A better question would be: why are you so nervous?

I can look into my house on Google maps, I can look up my girlfriend from two decades ago on the internet and if i get kidnapped, I hope someone can use GPS to find me. So Facebook wants to track my every move, so what? I like Christpher Cross and Arby's.

Big f'ng whoop.