In one of those end-of-the decade lists that have become a staple of Internet traffic this month, the Silicon Alley Insider served up a list of the stuff that became obsolete in the last decade. If you still depend on a dial-up connection, a film camera, a landline, a pay phone, a VCR, a movie rental store, a fax machine or (ouch) a newspaper classified ad, time is not your friend.

In this new century, change waits for no man or woman. You may remember when the VCR was a new and wonderful device. Now it’s just another artifact of old technology, replaced by video downloads, DVDs, TiVo and various generic video recorders. BTW, don’t bet that DVDS won’t go the way of VCRs  in the next 10 years.

A decade ago, tools that many find indispensible – smart phones and the thousands of applications created for smart phones,  iPods, TiVo, digital readers, hybrid cars,  Facebook, Twitter, GPS and more – either didn’t exist or were not widely available. Which leaves us to wonder how technology will change our world in the next 10 years.

Some folks wish time would stand still for a little while, but it’s more likely to speed up in ways most can’t even imagine.