MachineMade Blank Envelopes
This is what happens when computers take over. No more blank envelopes! They’ll be history. All those science fiction movies that depict a world taken over by computers show something really diabolical, but real life is at once more imaginative and less exciting (so far!). On the other hand, it’s exactly that kind of a nightmare for those whose livelihoods have been lost on account of computer automation!
Technology displacing workers and whole sectors of the economy is nothing new, of course, and blank envelopes won’t be made here again anyway – and even then, it will be machines that do the making. Whereas making paper was once a craft in its own right, it’s all done automatically by machines now. But even these overseas workers will be thrown out of work soon enough thanks to all the wireless communications that’s revolutionized just about every facet to how people interact.
Is there anything better than firing off an e-mail or text message at practically the speed of light? No printing required, no postage to deal with, no trip to the corner mailbox, and absolutely no waiting whatsoever for an answer! Well, at least not unless one’s correspondent isn’t interested in communications anyway!
Demand for blank envelopes is at the lowest point yet. The situation has gotten so that they are often hard to find, and one frequently has to resort to a specialty store in order to obtain some. And it’s all due to the computer revolution that’s totally changed just about every aspect of our lives. It’s nothing like the first envelopes known to history, which by our modern reckoning resemble pottery in practically every which way, made as they are of clay and requiring drying and even baking to be “sealed” – not to mention a right ol’ cracking in order to be opened!
There is nothing new, then, to the impact of technology. It is, moreover, dramatic in impact but not necessarily in that immediate, visceral way of fiction. And so, the actual year of 2001 gives us unmanned drones and the worldwide web while the film 2001 envisioned moon bases, space travel, and artificial intelligence.
Ergo, no more blank envelopes. That’ll be one of the most prevalent effects of computers taking over even more than they already have by now. People won’t know what an envelope is in just another three or four generations!