Number Please
Friday's paper had an interesting headline: White pages head for graveyard.
It was reported that in the past month alone, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania approved Verizon Communications Inc.'s request to quit distributing residential white pages. Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to call someone.
"Anybody who doesn't have access to some kind of online way to look things up now is probably too old to be able to read the print in the white pages anyway," joked Robert Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University.
The article continued, fewer people rely on paper directories for a variety of reasons: more people rely solely on cell phones, whose numbers typically aren't included in the listings; more listings are available online; and mobile phones and caller ID systems can store many frequently called numbers.
My community's White Pages section is less than a quarter of an inch thick, but I use it frequently. I use the Internet daily and have used it to find a number of a business in another community, but I have never looked online for a local, residential phone number. Yes, my phone has caller ID, but I don't use it as a phone book.
Call me old-fashioned, but I hope my community's White Pages do not disappear.
Would you miss the White Pages if they were no longer printed?
I still use the white pages but I go online. When we lived in an area where the phone book was for the normal person, I used the book. Here, we have four phone books, each about 5 inches thick. Until I finish my PhD I am not educated enough to decipher them. LOL
ReplyDeleteNo, I am afraid I wouldn't:)
ReplyDeleteYes, I would miss them for local numbers. For long-distance numbers I usually use the internet because I have no paper book for them.
ReplyDeleteKat
Definitely, I would miss them! I don't have a computer in my kitchen work area and THAT is where most of the telephoning is done. Wahhhh 8-((( Not another adjustment!!!
ReplyDeleteI use my white pages often as well. Although I think it's unnecessary to have three or four sets of books, it would be nice to have at least one! Wow! Thanks for the info!
ReplyDeleteI would not miss a phone book in my house and they go straight into the recycle bin when they arrive. If it's a business I use often, it's stored in my phone or my brain. Otherwise, I use the internet. If I don't have easy access to the internet, I call my son and have him look it up on his iPhone. I don't pay for the extravagant charges the mobile companies gouge us with.
ReplyDeleteHow are your socks coming along?
I didn't think of it until you asked, but I rarely use the white pages. I've stored the numbers of most of the people I call in my phone's directory. I do use our church's phone directory a lot, but I probably wouldn't miss the local white pages that much.
ReplyDeleteYes, I would miss the local white pages. It used to be a tiny book..now it is a big yellow thing with lots of ads and yellow pages I don't look at, with a white page section from a hundred or more miles around..I just want local..I do not store numbers on my phone and I do not have caller ID..and I still want my local phone book:(
ReplyDelete