the phone book...

do you ever use the phone book anymore? and i don't mean the yellow pages - though the internet has made those obsolete as well. how about the regular old phone book, where people just have their phone numbers listed for anyone to call?

i don't. i haven't for a long time. if i need to call someone or somewhere, i either have the number, or i look it up online. i just had telephone books delivered to me this week, and at the moment i haven't even unwrapped them because i just don't need them.

and then i was thinking about when i was younger, i can distinctly remember looking up friends' phone numbers in the phone book...i couldn't remember them all, so i would just look them up when i needed them. and there was nothing weird about that. now, if someone i knew marginally called me up and said they found my number in the phone book, i think i would be a little taken aback. maybe that's because it seems like it requires so much effort.

i think the fact that so many people use cell phones for their daily phoning needs is another factor. just about everyone i talk to is programmed into my cell phone. i don't even need their numbers anymore. will we ever have a cell phone book? to look up numbers? or will we simply bypass the archaic paper step and go straight to an internet directory of cell phone numbers?