Changes to our lives coming soon!!

Lighten up Joe, I was being facetious with the question.

Joe wrote: Don't forget the "smart" electrical grid, with higher prices during peak hours. When they add "smart" to something, I immediately think more expensive, complex, unreliable, and hacker prone.

When the sun goes under a cloud, or the wind stops, your AC, washer/dryer and other non-necessities will be shut off.

The state's Public Utilities Commission will not contest $44.5 million in costs associated with Xcel Energy's SmartGridCity project, according to a settlement reached Friday.

At issue was whether ratepayers or shareholders should foot costs of the Boulder-based pilot project, which had TRIPLED in price from initial estimates.

http://www.denverpost.com/business/fron ... i_15918674

Told ya!

Nmysys wrote: INTERESTING...

Coming Changes


9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7 "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again. All we will have that can't be changed are Memories.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT... .

all very interesting. i prefer paper for books myself and while most of my friends keep their phones on i don't, nor do i frequent places with cameras in place. although i am sure i am picked up by satellite when i am on top of a mountain.

I spouted opinion within your text.

Nmysys wrote: INTERESTING...

Coming Changes

Interesting compilation of changes that are coming... .

A Good Read

Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them but, ready or not, here they come!

1. The Post Office.
This is no big deal, even if it goes under, Fedex and UPS will expand their letter markets. This is good for all of us, we should have the goal that if something can be done if the private sector, there is no need for the PO. So I say good, this is progress.

2. The Check.
It is just an IOU, and one that more and more people are trying to back out of. I don't want things to be all electronic, I have been moving to mostly cash anyway, even for large purchases. So I say who cares, the check is not the exchange, it is just a tool for exchange. You know if you walk into a car dealership with 20k in cash, they still will not let you buy an $18,000 car without a credit check (pat act).

3. The Newspaper.
Who cares, especially locally, newspapers proove to be more and more useless, no quality news, no keeping the govt honest, just a rag to trade for money, they are all glorified people mags. Isn't the media mostly controlled by the govt at this point. Perhaps the line here should be that we have accepted a media that is now integrated with our govt. Since in the past the US has depended on the media for a check on the govt and now it does not play that role, we have really lost because there are very few real check on govt. Isn't the flume run by the BOCC and the sheriff and the Post is run by the state house and the gov. From reading them I don't see how anyone could argue this.


4. The Book.
This is not correct, There will be many electronic books, many standards will move to electronics and the paper book will not be mostly dead till 2060 or so. That is when the current gen that grew up before the internet will be old. Also like cell phones, people will learn that the neg effect to their eyes of these early gen devices are not good and likely not worth it.

And think of the convenience once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.

Nope not for all

5. The Land Line Telephone.
We are likley only a few years away from the great brain cancer epidemic, the scientist know it, congress knows it (according to watching them on Cspan), you even sign away your rights (to sue from health effects 40 years from now) every time you get a new phone, the phone companies know it and we will all suffer for our ignorance...like the statement above. These devices are not safe for adults, even though it is debated, they are absolutely not safe for developing humans (<20 years old) and this is NOT DEBATED BY ANYONE BUT PARENTS AND KIDS THAT WANT THEM. Parents that have given their children cell phones are simple abusers of their children via lack of knowledge or denial. It is like a blind parent shoving their kid into the interstate and feeling safe just cause they are blind and cannot see the trucks. Please stop giving kids these devices, then take the $1000 a year you would have spent to kill your child and give it to the local school system to lower my taxes.

6. Music.
Music will not die, this is absolute bullsh**, you seem to be forgetting about the free market or what is left of it. People want music, people define themselves by music, the industry will simply change. Next you are going to tell me porn is going to die, what a joke. The industry is just that, an industry, it represents people's desire for money, not music. That industry could die, not music. This statement is pretty odd.

7. Television.
Wrong again, sort of. Why differentiate between these mediums? TV is a device, it is really just a screen with some input. The computer is just another screen with slightly different styling. How things are transmitted is somewhat irrelevant. Could you not say that TV died with the analog signal in the last couple years. You don't because people really don't care how the stupid show gets into the box or which box, they will still watch it. One thing that absolutely will not die is the commercial and you don't want it too. Even in this post you mentioned how papers are going to go from free to charging, but that has shown not to work well except for Iphone idiots who will pay for anything. I bet commercials stay, on tv, in papers, on line, This is how we get our FREE media.

8. The "Things." That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future.
This is sort of true already. You don't actually own your home, even if you pay it off you really just rent it from the town or county. You don't own your labor, this is actually on hock for all our foreign debt (along with your land, private and public). In fact you don't own any of your income, as long as a group of your neighbors gets together and finds lots of wasteful things (you know, thing more important than your food and shelter) to spend it on. So this is more like an account of the past than the future.

9. Privacy.
My mom used to tell me that before I die there will be cameras in our living rooms. I think it will be far before I die, I give it less than 10 years before your neighbors say, why not, you really should only resist if you have something to hide, right? I mean think about it, most of you likely believe that you have to let the county assessor on your land...and you DON'T. My grandfather told me the other day that the town he lives in comes once every 3 years and inspects the inside of his house...I said "not if I am there that day" Most people just bend over and take it, stop bending over and you won't be ready to take it.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT... .

I also predict a doubling of those in Jail in the next decade or two relative to population, this includes your kids. We have turned crimes and criminals into a for profit business and really overall we could care less about people once the justice system says they are bad, even if we know that often this system fails. We are just obsessed with eliminating freedom, at any cost, this seems to be the new American way. As you have all told me many times, it just doesn't work unless we make more rules, even more.

I also predict that most people in Park County will want to move after the gas drilling explosion...and wish that they did this year, even at today's prices. Money rules all and the BOCC will get $ and you will pay with your entire lifestyle and everything you did previously to get it and your taxes will still go up.

The sad part about all of this is that many of us long for how things used to be, and then spend our days trying to change things even more.

Progress is anything but.

Joe wrote:

Joe wrote: Don't forget the "smart" electrical grid, with higher prices during peak hours. When they add "smart" to something, I immediately think more expensive, complex, unreliable, and hacker prone.

When the sun goes under a cloud, or the wind stops, your AC, washer/dryer and other non-necessities will be shut off.

The state's Public Utilities Commission will not contest $44.5 million in costs associated with Xcel Energy's SmartGridCity project, according to a settlement reached Friday.

At issue was whether ratepayers or shareholders should foot costs of the Boulder-based pilot project, which had TRIPLED in price from initial estimates.

http://www.denverpost.com/business/fron ... i_15918674

Told ya!

Another reason not to live in Boulder or Boulder County

I've already made some of these changes.

We gave up our landline more than a year ago since we all have cellphones. I remember when my family had one phone,then we had "extensions" in different rooms. Now, the phone goes with us when we walk through the house and into the backyard. It's a good thing.

I rarely mail a letter anymore. It makes no difference to me when I mail a package if it's USPS, UPS, FedEx or Airborne Express. I only care that it gets there quickly.

I've been watching more and more TV programs on my computer and an quite ready to drop expensive packages for TV of 490 channels that I don't watch.

I have Kindle on both my iPhone and my laptop. Still, I don't think books will be replaced completely. But they will be like vinyl LP records -- collectors items.

All the news I read, I read online. A newspaper is old the minute it comes out and stories can't be updated. You're also stuck reading everything from one source. Now, through RSS feeds, I can log on to Google Reader and instantly see the latest news from many news sources, here and abroad.

As for checks being replaced by cards, I'll go one better. Cards will be replaced by phones. You'll make charges and purchases using your phone. They're already doing that in some countries.

I quit using my iPod because my phone has iPod built in, so I listen to the music I want on my phone.

As for the Internet "cloud," some of us are already doing that. All our family photos are on Flickr $29.95 a year for unlimited storage and I don't have to worry anymore about losing photos when my computer hard drive crashes. It's not far fetched to think all the stuff on my laptop will be stored online somewhere. Instead of buying a new Dell, you'll be subscribing to a new online Dell.

Every industry wants you to spend all of your income on their product; clouds, cell phones, land lines, insurance, data storage, medical care, pet care, pay radio, auto off market gadgets, online banking, debit cards instead of folding money, the penny was to go away, on & on, & on & on.
If you drink their coolaide you will start believing their predictions of great change.
If you make a lot of money in you profession (if you have a profession) you may be able to change lifestyle and live the life that is predicted.
If you make little money you will fall off the gulf of the great divide which is forming between classes of society. The changes that may come are of no good for our culture.
By the way I thought everyone was to be riding the little scooter that was touted 5 or 6 years ago.

I live in an area where cell coverage is spotty at best - the land line stays.

Scooter - awfully hard to cart three children around to different events on a scooter - especially in winter. I'll keep my car.


Camera in my house - I DO have something to hide - myself, my private time. It's bad enough that people can access your laptop cams from the outside. I have mine taped over, since I don't get the option of NOT having one - it's built in.

These are all good things!! Change happens, if you don't imbrace change it will run you over.

"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."
General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

Cloud computing is coming for non-propritary data. It will be secure, redundant, and cheap.