Until the internet can move matter we will always need matter transport options of which the USPS is one of.
fun fact: street vehicles are still being used to transport data around. for large amounts of data, it’s faster and cheaper to write it on a disk, then ship the disk, instead of transporting it over the internet.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a Ford Taurus full of tapes screaming down the Jersey Turnpike.
I remember someone put a Micro SD card on a pigeon and sent it. Was faster.
i remember there is an XKCD about it, i just can’t find it rn
One time I looked at a 1tb microSD card and decided there was no fucking way that much data could fit into something so small. Ever since that day, no microSD card has worked for me. They get I/O errors, each one. Suspecting this isn’t a coincidence might be my most schizophrenic thought.
wait until you learn about the information density of DNA
I’d better go find out and balk at that too, free vasectomy if it works
Ah, classic sneakernet!
Email affected the USPS far less than people think it did.
EDIT: I should say the ADVENT of email.
Yeah, shitty politics has done more damage to the USPS.
Though there is some truth to OP, the new generation mail trucks are designed with less enveloped letters and more parcel post in mind than the Grumman LLV was.
Then Capitalism gave us delivery services, and the US government made the USPS bankrupt and obsolete.
The US government had a legal monopoly to “carrying letters and parcels arround.” Then it decided to remove that law, and then capitalism created delivery services.
In exchange for the monopoly there was flat rate service to every address in the country. Now they’re expected to do the flat rate service without the monopoly, while other companies targrt the most lucrative business.
And then Congress required them to take out loans to come up with 75 years worth of employee health benefits in just 10 years. That put them in massive debt, when other companies have such requirements.
Now, the same politicians that imposed those rules on them, are complaining that they’re no longer “profitable”, since every single penny they make is going towards paying off that debt.
Similar play as private equity
Email was never a threat to mailed letters or magazines. It was some nonsense thunked up by the same caliber of technophobe that called it the webbernet and thought it really was just a series of tubes.
series of tubes
Without those tech-illiterate morons, we wouldn’t have works of art like this though so it’s not all bad.
You know, he was making a coherent point about bandwidth limitations, it was just phrased in a silly way because that’s how you have to talk to laymen.
I thought it was a big truck.
So the man said “that’s a good thing” and the zen master said “we’ll see”
I bet actual personal letters are less than 1% of what USPS delivers these days
Certainly. It’s probably less than 1 in 50,000.
A mail straight from my living room to your living room, delivered instantly??? That’ll never work! Some kind of electronic mail??? The post office won’t stand for it!
