Can you imagine a world without mailing of paper communications? Will we receive virtual mail "pieces" electronically on our personal electronic surfaces or virtual reality mail box?
Can you imagine a world without mailing of packages? This is more difficult to foresee. Will we be able to print complex objects remotely or will we eventually figure out teleportation? This seems very, very far off into the future. Hence, we will continue to require postal service - whether privately run like FedEx, DHL, UPS or government-run like the U.S. Postal Service. Will it cost more to post to or from more remote or sparely populated places? Or will we be able to maintain a more homogeneous and frequent service across the board?
One innovation, using existing technologies, that we could see in the world of postal service is the development of postal mail aliases akin to email addresses or account user names for services like Twitter or YouTube. What would be the advantages? I could have different Mail-ID's (aliases) that I could share with different groups of people, related to the Google+ concept of sharing certain types of information with specific "circles." In other words, I could have a Mail-ID for my company's customers, one for my family and intimate friends, one for companies that might mail me products or information like NetFlix or Amazon.
One advantage would be the ability to provide someone with a way to mail me without having to necessarily share where I live, as a measure of safety and privacy. If I happen to move my personal or business address, people do not need to do anything different. The postal service would have been notified and the very same alias could be re-directed to the new physical address or P.O. box. Companies that have P.O. boxes would prefer to give their potential customers a Mail-ID, instead. This system could result in significant savings related to change of address and mail forwarding and could provide a valuable service for the post office.
For faster, more accurate service, one could program an RFID tag with the from and to Mail-ID information. This could be done with a standalone postal service device, an RFID writter plugged in to a computer or a mobile or tablet device. These tags would speed up sorting or mail and packages and could be re-programmed and re-used. We could imagine encrypted tags that we could give or mail to someone so that they could mail us back without even having to know our Mail-ID.
In an age where privacy has eroded significantly, could technology improve privacy in a sector of our lives and could this be a value-add service that the U.S. Postal Service could implement to help improve its precarious situation?
Would you use Mail-ID if it were made available to you? Why?
What ideas do you have to improve services, reduce costs?
What does your future tech crystal ball reveal?
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