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Blank Envelopes And Prince Phillips' Foot-in-Mouth Disease
Wait til computers really take over! Forget blank envelopes! They'll be history. Never mind the standard sci-fic trope about computers controlling everything; the reality of it all is much more prosaic (up to now!). Well, actually, 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 soon find themselves replaced in turn as technological change renders them obselete as well.
Why write a letter and stick it in an envelope when e-mail and the like can transmit your message so much faster? No printing required, no postage to deal with, no trip to the corner mailbox, and absolutely no waiting whatsoever for an answer! Well, not unless one's corresponding with a sloth in Australia!
Demand for blank envelopes is at an all-time low these days. 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. All thanks to the computer revolution that's upended whole industries worldwide. It's nothing like the first envelopes known to history, which would appear to us today to be more like pottery than anything else, made as they were from clay that were dried or even baked in order 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, instead of space travel, the year 2001 (as opposed to the eponymous movie by famed filmmaker Stanley Kubrick) offers us the worldwide web; instead of moon bases, we USAF Predator and Reaper drones; instead of artificial intelligence, we get cell phones.
So no more blank envelopes. You can bet the family jewels that that will be the most dramatic impact of our advancing technology. People won't know what an envelope is in just another three or four generations!
Computer Controlled Fireworks - Episode 01