The Internet: Eroding hard copy and concrete

With the increased use of the Internet for the transport of email, text, and instant messages, it is logical to assume there would be an associated decrease in the transport of hard copy mail. Likewise, the same idea would hold for an increase in online shopping and a decrease in business at street stores, as well as a surge in Internet traffic and a decline in hard copy news circulations. These are indeed the trends, as discussed in this article. If these trends continue, the world’s societies and how people spend time will be altered significantly.

This article uses Cisco’s study about the future of different types of Internet traffic volume. I thank Cisco for this source of information. You can obtain more details at:

http://techreport.com/news/28341/cisco-says-video-will-drive-massive-growth-in-internet-traffic.

Postal Service Traffic

Given the cost and time to send a first class letter, especially in comparison to sending an Internet email or text message, it comes as no surprise that the U.S. Postal Service is shutting down some of its retail offices and processing centers. An original announcement declared 672 offices (of 32,622) would be closed, but that figure was cut back because of public and political blowback.

The United States is not the only country experiencing this decrease. Postal services in many parts of the world find themselves in an upward pricing/downward volume spiral. As they experience a smaller customer base, they must raise the prices on their stamps to make up for the difference in revenue. This action leads to more customers leaving their fold, which requires raising the price of postage stamps to cover the decreased customer base.

As noted in an earlier article, to add fuel to the fire that is burning up the first-class mail industry, many Internet vendors provide a customer with the ability to sign an Internet document, a process known as a digital signature. In the past, electronic correspondence has been handicapped by the lack of a feature to validate a piece of correspondence and its originator. It is now possible to authenticate Internet correspondence with a digital signature. The technology is widely available and can serve as a replacement to registered mail as well as signatures certified by a public notary (depending on local laws).

Street Retail Stores

As the store closed its doors for business, the manager of a failed retail store succinctly summed the situation, “The staff at Jessops would like to thank you for shopping with Amazon.” This is not to say the entire retail store industry is going the way of this store, as several countries (such as China) continue to expand on-the-street-shopping. However, given the increase in online shopping, along with the speed and ease of using commercial delivery systems, the conventional retail business does not look promising.

The overhead of street stores cannot compete with their online counterparts. The online retailers have no elaborate store facades or interiors to maintain. The sales staff is usually composed of banks of computer servers. They have few or no people with union or pay issues. If the user screen interfaces are well designed, online shopping can be a pleasant and rewarding experience.

Unless resolved by the courts or Congress, some states will continue to pay no taxes for Internet sales. The legislatively ordained tax exemption granted to online retailers places the street vendors in an even more untenable position in relation to their online competitors. Additionally, it denies local, state, and national governments income to support public services. These bodies lose the taxes traditionally gained from street sales, but are not compensated by the migration of these sales to the online world.

Video Traffic: The Game-Changer

Internet video traffic will account for 80 percent of the total Internet traffic by 2019. Gaming downloads are increasing in volume, as end-users migrate to the Internet for entertainment. Games usually consume considerable bandwidth, as they have elaborate interactive graphics for their displays.

Unless the cable and satellite TV industries change their offerings and pricings, they are destined to experience a loss of customers to the mobile video and Internet video industries. This trend might continue regardless of what Comcast, Time-Warner, DIRECTV, and DISH do — unless they get into the mobile and Internet video market. Customers have had it with purchasing packages containing mostly programs for which they pay but never watch. In the long run, the current cable TV and satellite TV models make no sense.

This situation is called “cord cutting” in which Cisco states, “Traditional and subscription television viewing is increasingly being supplanted by other means of video viewing, such as [Internet] and mobile video.”

Hard Copy News

The traditional newspaper business has been in freefall for several years. A study by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) states print advertisement revenues are the lowest they have been since 1950. As part of the AEI study, the figure in this article shows that the readership of daily newspapers in the United States has been in decline for over a decade.

The information shown in the above figure likely comes as no surprise to the reader. Habits die hard. Older people are accustomed to getting their news from conventional newspapers (and television). The younger generations are more in tune with online news. I was surprised by the data in this figure, as I had thought newspaper readership had declined more than is shown in this study. Perhaps there is hope for a literate world after all.

The good news to those who treasure the written word and conscientious journalism is that several responsible newspapers and magazines are still plying their trade. Some are making the transition to the online, digital world, although they are struggling to bring in advertisement revenue. The newspaper that is publishing this series, the Coeur d’Alene Press, has installed a state-of-the-art online system. (I was not paid for this endorsement.)

The cities of today, with their downtown shopping areas, the hustle and bustle of the crowds, the sometimes frustrating vitality of congested sidewalks and freeways, cannot be replaced by the lone shopper sitting at his/her home or office looking for wares that are offered in the stores.

At least, that has been my contention for most of my life. But I could be wrong. Some of my colleagues told me that the Millennial generation’s preference for social networking includes a penchant for online shopping. After all, they have been conditioned for stand-alone interactions for many of their waking hours.

Notwithstanding these trends, how about that refreshing lunch during a shopping trip, perhaps the afternoon drink before heading home? Amazon is working on the answer: Drone-delivered dinners and cocktails to our front doors.

Uyless Black is an award-winning author who has written 40 books on a variety of subjects. His latest book is titled “2084 and Beyond,” a work on the origins and consequences of human aggression. He resides in Coeur d’Alene.