Lee Suckling: Ten services the modern generation doesn't need

Are travel agents being rendered obsolete by the internet? Photo / iStock

There are several products and services that the modern generation sees as redundant, things we've never used and will happily see extinct in the years to come. Here are ten on our list.

Travel agents

It baffles most of us that in an internet age of flight search services such as Skyscanner and Kayak, accommodation hubs such as Airbnb, and local knowledge review sites such as Tripadvisor, that travel agencies continue to exist. Once it may have been true that agents could get better deals than laymen, but today, anyone with an internet connection can access the lowest prices available. The existence of travel agents leaves us all wondering, "Is it only lazy people that still need you?"

Pay TV

All satellite and cable television's services struggle to appear relevant to the modern generation of "cord cutters". Save for the free-market-adverse exclusivity pay TV has on live sport, satellite providers offer us nothing but hundreds of useless channels playing mostly-dated content. Worst are pay TV movie channels, which cycle the same handful of films each week, meaning it's almost guaranteed every time you turn your TV on, a film you saw the night before is playing yet again.

Bars for hooking up

Newsflash! Nobody cruises for a hook-up in real life anymore. They're facilitated by Tinder and Grindr and other geo-locating services that mean we need to be halfway through a flirting session before we even consider putting our faces on, leaving the house, and spending any money. To the modern generation, bars are places for mates, not make-out sessions with strangers.

Cars

In generations gone by, cars were a status symbol. Today, they're just a necessary evil. A metal box that costs thousands of dollars to maintain and depreciates to zero quicker than anything else you'll ever invest in. The modern generation is waiting for the day when New Zealand's public transport system is actually up to fully-functional and reliable standards, and cars will only be something for weekends out of the city. Seriously, we hate owning them and the hours they suck out of every day of our life.

Is Twitter really a must-have app? Photo / iStock

Twitter

We're a generation supposedly obsessed by social media, but for some reason, the modern generation just doesn't get Twitter. Most of us have created an account at one point in time, but never really used it. Facebook manages our social lives and our messaging, Instagram and Snapchat is where we visually converse. Unless you're a corporate or a troll, Twitter serves little purpose. It's a graveyard for unverified news and irrelevant opinions. It therefore doesn't surprise us one but that, according to Traverse Digital, there are only 370,000 Kiwis on it.

Evangelists

Anybody trying to convert anyone from the modern generation is wasting their time. We are too cynical for that. Whether you're a religious evangelist, a Paleo evangelist, or an Uber evangelist, your breath is wasted on us. We'll find out if something is good on our own, thanks to the user-reviews culture we value higher than any single authoritative figure.

Printers

The modern generation doesn't own printers, and we can't wait until the rest of the world follows suit. Nobody wants physical documents. They're cumbersome, they're easily lost, and they're difficult and time-consuming to get to other people. If printers didn't exist, all institutions would finally be forced to do everything electronically and would stop requiring us to dash to ever-so-rare internet cafes to we can print and sign documents. Oh, and we'd give nature a helping hand, too.

DVDs are a frightening waste of space and money to the modern generation. Photo / iStock

DVDs

It baffles us that every supermarket checkout still features a stand full of DVDs alongside candy, gum, and other impulse purchases such as hand sanitiser. Who decides to pick up a copy of Maleficent with their milk and bread? What do they do with that disc after they've watched it once? The same goes for electronics stores that still feature aisles upon aisles of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Unless you live in a geographic area where broadband is rubbish, we don't understand why everybody isn't streaming their favourite films and TV shows.

Installation discs

Ditto on discs of any kind that are required to install any new device, software, or hardware (such as a router). Please send whoever is in charge of these a memo: our computers don't have disc drives anymore. In fact, if we can't install it from our smartphone, we probably don't want to install it at all.

BYO Wi-Fi

At what point will Wi-Fi stop being something we have to install and re-install everywhere we live and work, and start being something plumbed into every building, just like power, water, and gas? For the modern generation, it's time to define Wi-Fi as an Essential Service that nobody needs to think about.

- nzherald.co.nz