This is indirectly tech related, but generally not. The USPS has gone and upped the postal rates from $0.39 to $0.41 for the first ounce on a first class letter. They’ve also introduced something known as the Forever Stamp. I received a word of warning/advise about the use of this new stamp.

In the past, if you knew that your letter was going to be over one ounce you could load up on stamps to cover the additional weight. An example is if you mail in your tax forms, that stack of pages weighs more than one ounce, so you’d stick two (or three) $0.39 stamps on it.

The Forever Stamp will only cover the first ounce. If you place two Forever Stamps on a letter you just wasted one of those stamps. To complete the example above, you would use one Forever Stamp, then add valued stamps ($0.41, $0.26, etc.) on to it to make the required postal rate.

Just to clarify even more, if you place 10 Forever Stamps on an envelope you just used 10 stamps to cover the first ounce, and have done nothing to cover the additional weight.

The indirect tech impact of all the changes to the USPS regulations is that, with all of the policy changes, rate hikes, new classification rules (what is a letter v. flat v. parcel), etc. people are going to greatly reduce their use of tradition mailing (read: USPS) and turn more towards technological delivery methods.