Tech Boom Breeds Dinosaurs

We all know analog TVs, newspapers, VCRs and hard-wired phones are on the endangered species list as advances in technology continue to reshape the way we go about our daily business.

You might want to add the local phone company white pages into the mix.

When was the last time you looked in a phone book? Do you still receive one? Some folks (me included) use the phone book to boost the height of a computer monitor. That’s pretty much it.

For those of us over a certain age, a phone book once was an indispensable part of the home and office (for me, especially in newsrooms, where you could leverage favors if you had the much-coveted single phone book covering a particular county).

Not only did it have personal numbers, it contained factoids (zip codes, for one), business ads (local ones in the yellow pages section), coupons, and quick reference guides (county, town and school contacts).

The white pages vanished in Indiana a few years back, and they soon may be disappearing in your state.

Verizon has secured permission from New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida to stop mass distribution and is making the same case to Virginia regulators, writes Dick Eastman, who blogs regularly on genealogy, technology and computers.

Most companies are expected to soon follow the same path: petition the lawmakers to make telephone books optional, according to Eastman.

The obvious reason behind the demise of the white pages, of course, is the Internet, where just about any type of information can be found, even with faulty name spellings. Google searches and the resulting suggestion box terms eliminate most of the guess work.

In addition to people shifting their phone look ups to the Internet, Verizon says “the annual printing and distribution of such directories imposes environmental costs in terms of tons of paper used and energy consumed in printing, binding, and distributing the directories.’’

It also costs money to print the white pages, and unlike the yellow pages, residents don't pay for inclusion in the white pages.

Verizon plans to continue with free listings online and delivery of white pages to any household requesting them. Yellow pages and quick-reference government directories would still be printed.

As Eastman notes, many people have eliminated landlines (wired phones) in favor of cell phones for convenience, cost, and privacy (to avoid telemarketers). With Internet access readily available via handheld devices, it takes just seconds to look up a listed phone number online.

Probably the most significant reason to drop the white pages is environmental. Anything involving paper means the death of trees, something our planet needs to survive mankind’s destructive ways. Another effort to stop home delivery of local yellow pages is available now.

When I get phone books these days, I usually check to see if my personal listing is correct. Then the books sit around the house until the new ones arrive; the old ones wind up in the recycling can.

We, at WMB, appreciate the changes that come with advances in technology. We believe everyone who now receives a phone book should have the choice of opting out of receiving white and yellow pages.

Simply put, it should not take government petitioning by your local phone company to get the ball rolling. It’s just common sense. Why waste time, effort and money on producing a product which few people need or use? This is a no-brainer.

As Eastman points out, the number of all U.S. households where no one in the home uses the Internet is about 23 percent and declining annually. So that raises the question of why the other 77 percent should continue to receive something they’re not likely to need or use.

Truth be told, I could just as easily put a few hardcover books under my desktop monitor instead of phone books. Speaking of books, there’s this device known as Kindle … but that’s a post for another day!

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