US Wants To Build 'Internet of Postal Things'

dcblogs writes: The U.S. Postal Service plans to spend up to $100,000 to investigate how it can utilize low cost sensors and related wireless technologies to improve the efficiency of its operations. The postal service already scans letters and parcels up to 11 times during processing, representing 1.7 trillion scans a year. It uses supercomputers to process that data. In theory, the postal service believes that everything it uses — mailboxes, vehicles, machines, or a letter carrier — could be equipped with a sensor to create what it terms the Internet of Postal Things. The Internet has not been kind to the postal service. Electronic delivery has upended the postal services business model. In 2003, it processed 49 billion pieces of single-piece first-class mail, but by 2013, that figured dropped to 22.6 billion pieces. In other high-tech postal service news, Digital Post Australia has shut down. It was an attempt to digitize snail mail, but they didn't manage to convince enough senders that it was worth trying.

Comments

Reasons to use Snail Mail

[gurps_npc]

1) Want to be increase the chance it gets read, as opposed to thrown away.

2) Want to send something physical, such as a key. This also includes any letter you think your great grandchildren might want to read some day.

3) Want to send something that you don't want copied/replied/forwarded/subpoenaed in a law suit (A lot more important than you might think).

4) You don't know the recipient's email address.

5) The law says you must (important for financial papers, etc.)

Re:Reasons to use Snail Mail

[plover]

I wouldn't want to go through gigabytes of anyone else's old giant email archive, not my dad's, grandpa's, or son's. I barely get through my own daily notes. I keep old emails so I can search them, but I don't think of myself as beig so important someday that anyone else will ever care.

But I do still have a few printouts of emails my wife and I exchanged, back when we were dating in 1980. Again, not that anyone else will care.

What is the internet of things?

[kruach aum]

I've never understood this term. It makes no sense as an informative expression, because everyone attempting to use the internet needs a thing to do so. There can be no internet without things. In fact, the internet exists in the connections between things. The "internet of things" is like "the story of words" or "the forest of trees". It means nothing.

I like mail

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason, too many people instantly lose the abillity to care about what they're sending out (like the dreaded top-post), or even spell. In contrast, most of us have learned in school how to write a passable letter and there's something about having the thing in your hands, looking it over before stuffing it into an envelope, that makes people think again and perhaps even correct errors and such.

Because of that it'd be a shame to no longer be able to send letters. Then again, plenty of postal volume was in fact junk mail and much of that moved to email too. So they were shipping a lot of noise already, and taking that out would've been a blow anyway. So a smaller postal service is probably inevitable every which way. But losing it entirely would be... unwise.

So it's not surprising they want to improve and why not use modern technology for that? "Everybody" is doing it, and anyway, they're already taking and keeping pictures of everything sent, "for your safety from terrorism" and such malarky. I'm not at all happy with that.

In the end it's probably yet another "because we can" thing that may help a bit but the drawbacks will be systematically ignored, and that's bad.

Re:simple

[spire3661]

Daily postal service to all citizens is the mark of an advanced society. I dont care how much money it loses, its necessary and dont fuck with it.

First class letter mail down, parcels are up?

[whereiswaldo]

I receive more parcels now than ever before. Most of my shopping is done online. How is that not good for the postal service?