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More E-mail, Fewer Mailboxes

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the protected-monopolies-and-handy-excuses dept.

mikesd81 writes "Over at the Baltimore Sun there is an article about the post office removing those blue corner mail boxes because of e-mail. From the article: 'As more people send e-mails and pay bills online, the decline in first-class mail is forcing the U.S. Postal Service to remove tens of thousands of underused mailboxes from city streets.' The article goes on to say that the boxes were an American icon: 'You recognize them in Chicago, you recognize them in D.C., you recognize them in Florida, you recognize them in Montana,' Pope said. 'It's a piece of American iconography that has a wonderful history behind it.'" What the article forgets to mention: they're like an American TARDIS for children.

14 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Mailbox Graveyard? by gbulmash · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What TFA doesn't address is what they'll do with the mailboxes. Will they auction them off to collectors, recycle the metal, or will there just be a huge stack of retired mailboxes three rows over from the Ark of the Covenant in some warehouse somewhere?

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
    1. Re:Mailbox Graveyard? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      They will melt them down for scrap. They won't sell them because thieves would use them for nefarious purposes, and outside of collecting mail they have little other possible use.

      I know every hacker on slashdot will post and tell me how they can turn one into a wet bar, but I doubt if the post office will sell them unless its to somebody who will scrap them.

  2. Good luck... by jb.hl.com · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good luck paying bills, sending letters or doing quite a few long distance things if your Internet connection fails, or there's some kind of Internet-killing catastrophe...

    Redundancy is sometimes a good thing.

    --
    By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
    1. Re:Good luck... by The+Good+Reverend · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except that mail is also accepted at my home, at the post office, at the remaining blue boxes, many people's workplaces, etc. I won't worry.

  3. No surprise... by TheGreatHegemon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When you think about it, the first truly tech saavy generation (as a whole, not just a select few) is starting to come to maturation. Snail Mail will always have a roll, I think, for things that you can't give over e-mail (that handmade card or nice drawing by your grandkid), but it will definately become less and less prevalent.

  4. No namecalling please by BeeBeard · · Score: 5, Funny

    Calling those children 'tards won't solve a thing. Oh no, I think I've misread something...

  5. Top men by BeeBeard · · Score: 3, Funny

    Interesting problem. I hear that top men are working on it now.

    1. Re:Top men by kafka47 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Top. Men.

  6. Character?!? by RealGrouchy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah, I've seen the blue mail boxes that they have in the US. They look pretty flimsy and ugly if you ask me. Heck, the ones here in Canada do too.

    You want a post box with character? Here is a post box with character. Those red UK ones were made to last long after e-mail renders them useless. Heck, we have one in our downtown just sitting there because it wasn't built, it was designed.

    - RG>

    --
    Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
  7. Less mailboxes, more kiosks please by rolfwind · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Of course 1st class letters are dropping, who sends letters these days besides junkmail and bills? Not many. I can only think of birthday/holiday/invitation cards being the only regular use these days.

    But the sending of priority mail and boxes must be up with ebay and all that. I wish the post office opened more small kiosks around the place, in strip malls, supermarkets and such, every time I go into a main branch it is a long wait. It would be profitable for them, especially as they are cheaper than the competition.

  8. TARDIS is quite apt... by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Informative
    For those that don't know, the TARDIS is the vehicle piloted by the Doctor in Doctor Who. Its use as a comparison here is quite apt: the TARDIS is disguised as a police box, which was once a common sight on British streets but which, as portable radios took over, fell into obsolescence. There are very few police boxes still around, but once they were so commonplace that a time traveller could disguise his time machine as one and expect it to go unremarked.

    Now, it seems the iconic American mailbox is to fall into similar disuse...

    Unless, of course, I've completely misunderstood the metaphor. Does the US postal service provide mailboxes which are far larger on the inside than on the outside?

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  9. Re:So what? by LindseyJ · · Score: 3, Funny
    There are too many people, like me, who detest mobile phones (AKA annoying, chattering leashes).

    This just in -- New models of mobile phones being designed with "power buttons". This unique feature allows one to turn the device off (!!) if one doesn't want to accept calls.

    Wait a second... more breaking news! It seems that these same phones are also being equipped with ringtone volume controls and vibration functions! Not only that, but they also come equipped with small screens that display the identity of the incoming caller. And with a single button, one can choose to reject an incoming call!

    It is truely a marvelous world of technology that we live in.
  10. Re:So what? by mctk · · Score: 3, Funny

    Do farmers have little fingers and small heads with which to operate these phones?

    --
    Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
  11. Re:So what? by ottothecow · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Not a pay-phone mind you...he said a pay phone booth which is quite a rarity these days.

    About a year ago my roommate was interviewing for a job and one of the questions they gave him was "how many phone booths are in manhattan." I think they may have told him how many blocks tall and wide manhattan is but that was it. Being the very mathematical person he is he simply took the area and guessed at how many phone booths there would be per square block.

    When he told me this though, my initial response was zero--they have gotten rid of them all since everyone has cell phones and its cheaper to maintain payphones that are not inside booths (like those in building lobbies). We did some quick research on it and found a site where soemone had documented the last remaining manhatten phone booths...there were 4 of them. 4 in the largest city in the country.

    --
    Bottles.