The New Phone Book

I was listening to public radio just now and a story came on that said that the local telephone company had received permission from federal and state authorities to make the online version of its white and yellow pages the official version, meaning that the telephone company no longer is required to deliver a print version of the two books to its customers. The story went on to say that our telephone company was one of the first in the nation to make this request and have it granted.

I imagine a lot of people might be upset when they learn that the only way they can get a new phone book in June is to visit one of the telephone company's local offices or stores. But my first thought was, "Who cares?" Every June we get three of these monstrosities, a region wide white pages, a region wide yellow pages, and a smaller county wide book that has both the white and yellow pages in it. We open the bottom drawer of our office desk, take out of the back of the drawer the old books that we've never opened, replace them with the new books, and forget about the books until the next year, when we repeat the process. Meanwhile, the homepage of our family start up page on our browser has a link called "white pages" and another called "yellow pages," and that's where we go to get our information.

It's just another change brought on by the Information Age, and it's not that big of a deal really. And in all honesty, I've never had my name in the phone book anyway. For the last 8 years I've lived at a business, and before that I always had an unlisted number, so I never had that moment of joy that Steve Martin had in The Jerk: