One very visible symbol of the shift from snail mail to email and all forms of electronic communication: Those blue mail boxes are disappearing! San Francisco's lost about 800 in the last couple of years, and dozens more are slated to disappear. Across the country, the USPS has killed off 60% of the boxes, bringing the total down to 160,000, down from 400,000 in 1985.

The postal workers are actually counting the number of pieces of mail going into boxes over a six to eight week period, and if it averages less than 25 pieces of mail a day, the box gets slated for removal. "To be honest, we don't get a lot of complaints," says a spokesman for the postal service in San Francisco. And we're sure those complaints come from old ladies.

But anyhow, the decline in use of the mails started way before the internet -- when more women went to work in the 1970s, and long-distance calls became cheaper, letter writing declined, and the culling of boxes began.

[Chron]