Looking Into The Future For Postage Stamps

I'm posting this link because it goes along with my thoughts which I have been thinking about for some time.

https://goscf.com/t/28750#28750


Open for discussion.
I've been thinking and looking into the future of Stamps and Stamp Collecting.

There has been much discussion on SCF and several other Forums I belong to about the future of Stamp Collecting say 2065 and beyond.

I think there will still be stamp collectors and stamp collecting will be still be around but the number of collectors will be very low.

I think the USPS will still be in existence but in a very small and limited capacity. Mail delivery will be down to three or four days a week. Postage will be so expensive it will no longer be profitable for business to advertise through the mail system.

I think the USPS will almost cease producing postage stamps as we know them today. People will print the postage to mail on there home computers. Not computers as we know them now but computers to come. The computers we are using now will be dinosaurs. Extinct. I think the USPS will continue to produce a very small limited supply of commemorative stamps.
I think because of this especially Used Postage Stamps will become scarce if not rare and because of this. It will cause the values to soar. I not sure about Mint stamps but I think they will soar in value also, but perhaps not as much as postage cancelled stamps. course I won't be around since I am already near the end of my life.
My Grand-kids might see this come to pass though.

Very insightful, TinMan. When you say used postage stamp values will soar, I'm assuming you mean those produced decades into the future?

Dont worry too much! There always seems to be enough junk mail!! LOL

By 2065 there will no longer be a 'home computer' or 'personal computing'; ubiquitous computing will be the norm. Computing will be done everywhere and on everything (i.e. clothes). In other words people will have access to information that makes today's information access look like the stone age. Like this information access, communications will be on demand and in real time. The existing obstacles of I/O (Input/Output) will have been solved. This includes no longer needing keyboards, mouse, or big displays. Voice recognition will be the primary input, 3D hologram type displays will be the output.

Computers, as we know them today, will no longer exist but rather become indistinguishable from our everyday lives. But everything, and I mean everything, will become 'smart'; and all of these things will be in communication with each other. Your clothes will monitor your health 24/7 and this will be monitored by your health care provider. All current established technological systems will transform to take advantage of this ubiquitous computing; postal systems will not escape unchanged. At first postal systems will evolve to become almost exclusively parcel delivery services but eventually hard copy information will simply not be needed to be delivered to anyone's door. As 3D printer technologies become more common even the need to parcel delivery to your home will also subside.

How will all of this look? On your way to your job your car, which is driving itself, your dishwasher sends you yet another notification that it is not been running at peak performance. You query your dishwasher and it displays the status, a moving part is now 65% worn and eminent failure will occur within 4 weeks (given your current usage of your dishwasher). You only need to check for price and availability, the exact part needed is already identified for you. It is already displaying the purchase options for you, making the purchase is as simple as making your mid up which service you will use. When you arrive back at home in the evening the part will be sitting on your 3D printer and ready for installation.

Things like stamps and coins will be artifacts of yesteryear. Our hobby will not completely disappear but remain in the same way that people now enjoy horseback riding or having a house with their parents furniture in them.
don

Classic Coins
I was thinking stamps that had already been postmarked because of the limited supply of stamps produced and the small number of stamps used and still in existence. Stamps that have gone through the system and had been cancelled. The visable postmark as we see it today will become obsolete. Readers will read and know if a stamp has been used or not and used stamps will be made so they cannot be detached and reused. My youngest Grand- Kids might see this come to pass. Certainly their kids will.

I was not thinking so much about what the postal system was going to look like and operate. My thoughts were more along the line about the value of used and Mint stamps. I think the value of postally used stamps will soar because they will become scarce as well as the value of Mint but it will be far into the future. As supply dwindles values will increase.

So depressing all this "improved" communications thing. I sometimes wonder if things might not work out the way the scientists and inventors might like. One of my favourite writers is David Brin and this clip from Kevin Costner's film of Brin's wonderful book, "The Postman", beautifully evokes the joy of the nearly lost art of letter writing. One of the best scenes in any movie, ever.

Terry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxzMzwskcBA

For individuals, the Postage Stamp Of The Future is a bar code, QR code, or similar optical pattern.

Pre-printed stickers will be unique and (more or less) free.

You will apply one sticker to your piece of mail, and shoot it with your smart phone (or future equivalent).

Your bank account will be debited, and your piece of mail will be recognized as post-paid at every scan of the way (to coin a phrase).

The NYP (Not Yet Posted) stickers will not be 'yours', in any meaningful sense of the word, and will not have any inherent value, so you will be able to use any NYP sticker to send any piece of mail ... the sticker you have at home, or in your car, or from your buddy, or from your office ... you will only get charged when you scan it, so the system will not care where you got it.

Lost your smart phone? Little pay stations, rather like pay phones, will scan the sticker and let you pay cash/whatever.

My 2c.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

No doubt there will be change, but things change a lot slower than most people predict. Parts of this thread recall reruns of the B science fiction movies from the 50's that predict all kinds of advancements by the 70's such as hover craft and fully operational androids to name a couple. Watching those movies today you can't help but laugh at the optimism.

Take voice recognition software and natural language processing (NLM). For decades now NLP has been threatening to burst on the market place and replace outdated technologies (e.g., medical dictation), rather than coming in slow trickles. It'll be many more decades still.

Voice recognition points to the other problem with the optimism arguments: people just might not want to use the new technology. No one wanted to talk to the coke machines with this technology from decades past or their cars. I personally can't stand the VR used in telephone call center applications and numerous studies have shown people are uncomfortable issuing voice commands in certain settings. We could very well go back to humans manning customer service calls and writing letters (though I doubt the latter).

51Studebaker, that's pretty much the vision of the future I have. Stamps will be a curiosity, a relic of a bygone past. There are very few old things that people don't collect, however, and I'm sure stamp collecting will still be around. I think things somewhat depend on how much people embrace or reject this Brave New World. Some people won't look back for a second and won't care about hanging onto the past. Others will consciously want to unplug and slow down, and those are the kind of people who will still enjoy stamp collecting.

Agreed TheArtfulHinger, when stamps finally disappear (I'm guessing in 15-20 years) it will be interesting to see what happens with philately. Some would say that it might actually stimulate an new interest in stamps, new people will be gravitate to the hobby with hopes of new keepsakes and/or potential profit. Others might argue that philately will slowly and eventually decline to an obscure hobby. As some have pointed out it could be that some kind of 'postal agencies' may exist far into the future with the sole purpose of generating and selling gummed pieces of paper. (Heck some may argue that we have already gotten to this point!)

Postal system were originally developed to allow people to communicate with one another over distance. Stamps were a technology needed to make financial tracking easier. What is the internet? A system that allows people to communicate with one another over distance. In real time and with any kind of media they desire. The internet is the next generation postal system and no one needs a stamps for making a post in this forum.

My hope is that philately will be in a good position to capture the potential new wave of interest when postage stamps finally disappear; if it is then I am optimistic about the long term viability of the hobby. If it is not my optimism is not as high.
don

Heck, collectibles might well be the ONLY thing that needs to actually ship from place to place 50 or 100 years from now. 3D printing is in its infancy, and it is probably The Next Big Thing. It has the potential to change how goods are bought, sold and used more than any development since the Industrial Revolution, maybe ever. The disruptive potential, for both good and bad, is immense and is hard to exaggerate.I have little doubt that almost any item will be able to be manufactured on demand in our own homes, and probably sooner than we think. Clothing? Stand in front of a scanner and you can have a new suit, perfectly tailored to you, in minutes. I have little doubt that that day is coming. The technology already exists, it's just a matter of making it affordable and easy to use for the masses.

Eventually it will be only original, collectible items such as stamps, coins, original art, and antiques that will actually need to be physically moved from one place to another. That, and the raw materials for our in home factories. Maybe food, but we'll probably be able to "print" that as well at some point. The rest of the stuff we'll just click (or say) "print" and we'll have it in minutes or even seconds. Amazon, Wal Mart and other retailers, if they're still around, will sell the software instructions and raw materials needed to make things, and their stores will gradually shrivel and die.

TheArtfulHinger your really dreaming now.

51studebaker: We might try taking a look at other things that were a) collectible while they were still in use, and b) subsequently went out of use. Shaving brushes? Zippo lighters? Quill pens?

Since so many of us got our start collecting stamps & coins by pulling stamps off of the incoming mail and silver coins out of our change (I found a wheat penny last night, yay!), the fact that stamps are so much less a part of communication and coins are so much less a part of commerce bodes ill for The Hobby.

But what will happen to The Hobby tells us little about what will happen to Our Hobby. We can continue enjoying ourselves, right to the grave. And if we plant a few seeds along the way, and introduce a few acolytes to the cult, so much the better.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Not dreaming whatsoever. Everything I'm talking about has already been done - including lab-grown meat. We just need to get the cost down to the point where it's a reliable, affordable appliance that everyone will want.

Some early adopters already have early generation 3D printers in their homes. Give it 5 years and some improvements in the technology, and you'll probably know a few people yourself who have one. Give it 10 and they'll start being commonplace, although you might not be able to make really complex things yet by then. Give it another 10-20 years for the technology to fully mature and everyone will have one and the disruption will be in full swing.

The only doubt in my mind is how long it will take, not whether it will happen at all. Otherwise I have zero doubt - zip, nada, none - that it's going to happen eventually, and probably in my lifetime (I'm 44). And once these things are everywhere and can make almost anything, all one has to do is think through the implications of what that means to how we work, shop, play, etc.

TheArtfulHinger, I think you took this insightfulness up a notch. Very deep and believable, matter of fact!