Yes, I strongly doubt that in ten years all of the esixting housing stock in the US will have replaced their locks withdigital ones.
I highly doubt some of these things as others have said. And some are sad. Text books or any books.
How about some other things such as land line phones or phones where the handset is attached by wire. Maybe cable tv?
How about things we wish would disappear. Do not want to hijack this thread, so maybe will start another.
Plows that may disappear are those on farms. At least from what I have seen.
And my first thought too was snow plows. How are they going to do that? Maybe it would result from global warming. LOL
I like keys. I hope they stick around a little longer. I actually stayed at a hotel with a real key recently. How nice to know that if there was a blackout I could still get in and out of my room.
Why isn’t cable TV on the list? It will be replaced by people with digital antennas and with streaming.
Given that email is about as private as skywriting, email will become extinct. Young people will rediscover pen and paper. The post office will be saved from financial ruin.
And here I was hoping to see cellulite on the list 
Everything on that Kiplinger article list requires the electricity** grid/b– which means they are all vulnerable to grid blackouts.
Privileged CC posters take for granted the internet-related things. But right now, poor families don’t have home internet service.
^^I dunno, if I was poor, I don’t think I’d be spending money on internet services. It ain’t cheap.
However, I’ve seen quite a few homeless guys with iPhones, so maybe it is worth the money to them.
Internet is an absolute necessity in the modern US. Even the poor generally have to apply online for welfare benefits. To not have home internet access is a major, major hindrance for schools, jobs, and so on.
I am in a so-so place of privilege now but I definitely wasn’t in undergrad and below. I’ve been on welfare before and still almost never went without internet. Sure, I could have gone to the library to use the internet if I needed to but when you’re working 10-12 hour days or more, you’re often not available at the same hours as the library is open. I would not have made it through undergrad if I sacrificed the internet (and thus wouldn’t be in the position I am today as a PhD student).
So one may not think that they wouldn’t spend money on internet, but when you’ve been in that position you realize how much harder it would be to survive, let alone succeed, without internet.
ETA: But yes, many poor people do go without because they don’t have a choice. But that is different from choosing not to have internet… if that makes any sense. https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/05/12/19659/rich-people-have-access-high-speed-internet-many-poor-people-still-dont
Cell phones are often the ONLY way homeless folks have if keeping in touch and hearing about jobs and whatever services they get. I’m not saying iPhones, but cell phones and service is much more common than landlines if you have no idea where you will be sleeping.
I agree that internet connectivity can be very important as well and the cell phone can allow that to some extent also.
Would cigarettes ever disappear? Probably no time soon.
I see very little reason, if you can’t easily afford it, to pay for both Internet and a cell phone. I think we pay something like $70/month for Internet service. It’s really expensive. Cell phone service, you get just about everywhere. There is no reason to pay for both, if you don’t have the money. It’s just an unnecessary luxury…
Some of these things will disappear in first world countries. But I don’t think the plow is going away any time soon in a lot of the world.
There are cities that are putting wifi on school buses so kids can do their homework on the way home from school because their homework requires the internet and they don’t have it at home. Kids also hang around outside closed libraries to tap into the internet. Hard to submit your term paper via cellphone. The internet is hardly an unnecessary luxury for many. It’s a resource without which they are falling further and further behind.
Internet is the new electricity, IMO. It’s a basic.
The reason why the article says blackouts are going to be a thing of the past is because homes will have back up generators. They claim that alternate sources of cheap battery storage will become available to work when you do have power failures.
So, there will still be power failures. It’s that your home will have a cheap way to get power when the grid can’t.
There are whole home generators available now, usually powered by natural gas. They are expensive. But if you live in an area where there are many power outages, they are really nice. And seamless, you don’t really realize when you go from one to the other.
Re post#4 This research http://www.vtti.vt.edu/PDFs/Automated%20Vehicle%20Crash%20Rate%20Comparison%20Using%20Naturalistic%20Data_Final%20Report_20160107.pdf addresses the safety of driverless cars over those with drivers. Apparenty in 6 years the # of miles driven compared to accidents in cars with drivers will be significantly lower.
Ehh, I disagree. Surfing the internet on a cell phone, or even tablet, is awful, IMO. Yes, it will get the job done, but it’s not enjoyable at all.
Personally, I would be happy if smartphones went away (along with overpriced data plans) and basic flip phones came back. If flip phones came back and had a nice map application with GPS, I would be set. That’s all I would need.
I just read that the last company making VCRs will cease production at the end of this month. If you have personal videos on VHS, you might want to get them digitized sooner rather than later.
“Ehh, I disagree. Surfing the internet on a cell phone, or even tablet, is awful, IMO. Yes, it will get the job done, but it’s not enjoyable at all”
I guess we’ll have to disagree. I love having the internet (though ours really sucks and we lose the connectivity all the time), but I’m not trading food and medical care to have a big screen instead of an iPhone. Even though I need a larger screen, since I’m getting those aging vision issues.