The USPS and Land Line Phone Companies are suffering analogous effects from communications technology.

E-mail, paperless invoices, e-bills, electronic deposits and online bill payment facilities are rapidly rendering the US Postal Service obsolete for commerce and personal communications, except for parcel delivery. As time passes, the vast majority of the mail being delivered by the USPS will be only discounted-postal-rate advertising junk mail, stuff that most people probably don't want ... mine goes straight into the recycle bin.

Furthermore, with the availability of competitive shipping services offered by FedEx, UPS, DHL and others, it may be only a matter of time before the USPS is unable to compete in package and overnight letter delivery services.

With the proliferation of voice, data and video services offered by wireless carriers, the days of the landline telephone companies are numbered. It hardly makes sense to pay $50/month for unlimited local & long distance landline service when you can get the same features through VoIP for far less, and/or the same service with incredible options and portability with wireless phones.

Landline telephone sets have not kept up with technology either ... for example, it is virtually impossible to find a 2- or 4-landline telephone base with extra cordless handsets that have DECT 6.0, hold, muting, caller ID, conferencing, speakerphone, intercom, memory/speed dial and BlueTooth. Forget about a camera, text and video messaging, MP3 and game capability.

Technology is also impacting a lot of other industries.

> Film cameras and Fax machines are headed for extinction.

> MP3 and DVD downloads are already impacting the CD/DVD burning sources.

> Web-based media is rendering newspapers and magazines impotent. I get instant news feeds via e-mail from about a dozen sources long before they even hit CNN, Fox and MS/NBC. By the time you read a newspaper, it is sooooo over.

> Web-based mega-merchants like Amazon.com are killing bricks'n'mortar merchants like Comp USA, Circuit City ... and department stores like Sears, Macys, Dillards are being paralyzed and decimated by innovative specialty shops and online mail order vendors.

> Products like Kindle (with free 3G wireless downloads), Sony Reader and Apple i-Pad Tablet may impact the printing and publishing industry ... plus they open up a whole new opportunity for individuals to publish their own literary, music and/or video works without greedy publishing houses, record labels and studios either deep-sixing their works or ripping off a huge portion of their earnings.

All we need now is "beam me up, Scotty" technology, and the entire transportation and hotel industries will vanish ... you will be able to attend 3-day conferences in Paris, London, and Tokyo and sleep in your own bed each night.