I walked out of my house the other day and I saw something that was amazingly similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls sitting on my porch. I vaguely remembered these items from years gone by, but honestly hadn’t looked at them in forever.
Okay, they were phonebooks. Remember those? You used to have to use them to look up information about businesses in your area. They were loaded with great information like phone numbers, addresses, maps sometimes, pictures of the businesses and even listings of services they provided.
You’d grab this big, heavy book of paper and thumb through it looking for what you needed, then you’d make a phone call.
When was the last time you used a phone book? What do we use these days instead? The computer! Or even phones themselves to get the information we need.
Why are they still printing these beasts? How many trees are cut down for these? Do we just use recycled paper for them? I sure hope we do.
I understand that there are probably a small percentage of people that still want and use phonebooks, but do they have to print millions of them and deliver them unrequested to our doorsteps?
Why can’t I opt out of this analog spam that shows up at my house at least once a year?
Image: kamaru on flickr