Netflix, Saturday mail delivery, and technological change

Bob Greene: About that Saturday mail ...

Excerpts:

n a digital age, the U.S. mail is a throwback to a time when the only way to receive information was to have human beings -- paperboys, mail carriers -- bring it to you by hand. You're reading these words on a screen; chances are, whatever written communication you have with friends and family members in the next 24 hours will be via e-mail and text message, not by dropping an envelope into a mailbox.

The problems the Postal Service faces are real, and they're enormous. Postmaster General Potter says that getting rid of Saturday delivery would save more than $3 billion a year. My guess is that not only are they going to have to do away with Saturday mail -- the time is probably coming when delivery on other days of the week will disappear, too.

So the question is not whether the days of mail delivery will be curtailed. It's whether we will be happy about it.

....
[A Netflix impact]

If enough people don't receive their Netflix envelopes on that first Saturday the mail doesn't arrive, and there is thus a hole in their Saturday nights -- well, President Obama might have to step in to cool the outrage, the same way President Dwight D. Eisenhower did in April of 1957, the only other time a permanent cessation of Saturday mail delivery was attempted. It lasted just one weekend. Americans wouldn't put up with it.

...

[On Technology Change]

Things change. Telephone landlines are abandoned for cell phones; typewriters are tossed out in favor of computer keyboards. In doing the research for last Sunday's column about mail service, one of the sources I consulted was the February 12, 1951, issue of Time magazine. (Eisenhower, not yet president, was on the cover).

Sprinkled throughout the magazine were big, splashy advertisements extolling the glories of companies and products that no longer exist: Kaiser automobiles, Trans World Airlines, the Milwaukee Road passenger railroad, Moore-McCormack oceanliner cruises.

Comment: Oh the value of looking at old magazines! As far as I am concerned they could deliver the mail 3 days a week! I added hyperlinks. The Milwaukee Road Wiki article is good!