I am thinking that we are close to the penny being obsolete. As I walked to the door which exits the building where a couple of students were waiting, I spotted two pennies on the floor. I stopped and looked at the students, marveling at the fact that they had not even noticed free money right there within reach. As I bent down to pick up both of the pennies, one of the students said, “Are you really going to pick those up?” Apparently, my thinking is behind the times as they are worthless already.

What other items of current use within our structure will be gone from our society in a few years? Newspapers are disappearing. Paper may not be far behind, and perhaps someone will invent a material to write on that is either electronic, magnetic, color sensitive, or something that does not disintegrate, yet is not paper. But if paper goes, do you realize what else will go? Pencils, pens, and markers. While those would be incredible to become lost to our way of navigating, this is not saying that writing will ever go away.

But, there is one object which has been paired along with paper for over 100 years, and would be a devastating loss to society if it was no longer produced. That object is the paperclip. We would miss the paperclip. It is one of only a few inventions which became multi-functional options for people in sticky situations. There are 1000’s of other uses for them which have nothing to do with paper. One website claimed “over 200 ingenious uses”. Are there simply enough paperclips in the world to go around for many years after the object of its primary function, paper, is gone?

Would we just have to give them another name to keep making them? Curved wires is nothing catchy. Bent rods is lousy too. Maybe the Swiss Army Clip! Would people have to go into the file storage warehouses and swipe paper clips just to have them? Yes, the place where paper goes to be hidden for years and years. A hospital calls it the vault. Our school calls it the dungeon. Perhaps we will all say on some odd day in the future, “if I just had one of those thingies that used to hold papers together.”

Anyway, just wondering what the future will be like and hoping that you will have a Happy Friday.