Did you see it? You may have tossed it out with the “junk” mail.
Do you even know what it is?
It’s the new phone book. That’s right — THE NEW PHONE BOOKS ARE HERE!
Well, it’s not so much a book as it is a pamphlet. But they’re still calling it the “phone book”.
Check out what they’re calling a phone book this year:
It barely raises off the table. Literally, it’s a half-inch thick.
The old Pottsville and Schuylkill County phone books used to be able to boost a kid up to see the dinner table. This thing will barely keep the table from shimmying.
Also, note how there are two prominent calls to action on the cover. One tells you how to never get the phone book again. And the other tells you how to order more phone books, but also tells you how to recycle the one you’re looking at right now.
Inside, it’s got everything you’d expect from a phone book. There are names, addresses, and numbers. And then you’ve got the Yellow Pages, reserved for business listings. But you don’t have many of either and that’s about it.
The New Phone Book is Thinner Than Ever
Of course, today, you basically have to think about who you want to call and the internet seems to know. They’re listening. That’s how.
It’s convenient and a heck of a lot easier than “looking it up in the book”.
Yeah, the phone book used to be so thick and chock full of information that people called it “the book”.
But it’s still just as useful today to the right person. If you’re reading this, it probably serves little purpose in your life. You may not even have one. But there are people out there who don’t carry smartphones.
And some don’t have reliable internet or internet at all. So, the phone book does still serve a purpose.
Before cell phones, though, the phone book was something that tied us all together. And businesses used to work hard on their ads so they’d get the attention they paid for in the Yellow Pages.
Check out these great vintage Yellow Pages ads (not from around here, unfortunately) that show the phone book in its heyday.
It was summer reading list material.
There was even a small phone book war that lasted from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s. The Donnelly Directory was going to change our lives forever. It was like when AltaVista came out after we’d all been getting frustrated with Netscape.
Do people still even read the phone book? Are landlines still a thing?
According to TextRequest.com, just 43% of American households have a landline phone. But less than 10 years ago, almost 70% of households had a landline. Times change quickly these days.
Canary Reader Poll
Tell us when is the last time you used a phone book for its intended purpose?
[poll id=”9446″]
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